Hi all, just wondering when the next ‘release’ is scheduled.
(R1Alpha4.1 is latest?)(November 14th, 2012)
It’s not known, but someone estimated it to be ready from 4 to 6 months if I remember correctly.
You can use the nightly images, they’re not dangerous, are pretty stable, and have a lot of new features. I have read that the releases are made only to attract developers.
http://download.haiku-os.org/nightly-images/x86_gcc2_hybrid/
Are any of you experiencing the inability to change your screen size with the Screen preferences app in the latest Nightly builds? I’m using VirtualBox with other/other setting and have never had this problem before. Alpha 4.1 is no problem.
Also, in these builds since 4.1, has the “setgcc gcc4” option been taken out?
Thanks.
[quote=jdari]It’s not known, but someone estimated it to be ready from 4 to 6 months if I remember correctly.
You can use the nightly images, they’re not dangerous, are pretty stable, and have a lot of new features. I have read that the releases are made only to attract developers.
http://download.haiku-os.org/nightly-images/x86_gcc2_hybrid/[/quote]
Thanks for the info, I have tried ‘nightly’.
However, someone new to the project website will probably think it isn’t being developed any more with a release date that old.
Could this be part of the reason the project is short of developers/porters (?).
[quote=km]
However, someone new to the project website will probably think it isn’t being developed any more with a release date that old.
Could this be part of the reason the project is short of developers/porters (?).[/quote]
Probably. They should have released Alpha 5 before Package Management (a new feature) last year, but they didn’t. Now we have to wait until they “stabilize” some things before another release.
[quote=steveh2009]
Also, in these builds since 4.1, has the “setgcc gcc4” option been taken out?
Thanks.[/quote]
It was changed to setarch. (i.e. setarch x86)
https://www.haiku-os.org/community/forum/where_setgcc
[quote=km]
However, someone new to the project website will probably think it isn’t being developed any more with a release date that old. Could this be part of the reason the project is short of developers/porters (?).[/quote]
Developers coming to that conclusion simply by looking on the last alpha release date, would appear to be a bit shortsighted or superficial. Not the qualities you’re looking for when developing an OS. The front page has a list of the recent “source activity”. Clicking on “More” shows that there are usually a few commits every day. Hardly an indiction of a dead project.
The nightly images are foremost for developers to easily locate where a bug was introduced and if the build has been broken. Of course, more frequent official alpha releases would be nice, but wishing and praying for them works just as well as with anything else… 
Regards,
Humdinger
To develop for Haiku the existence of a reliable platform release is essential.
It does not matter, whether a big bundle of applications would be at hands.
But there has to be a stable development environment and fixed link libraries.
Nightly builds could not at all be any base for genuine Haiku developments.
I agree with Octopus above. Developing for Haiku can be a frustrating experience. The decision to add the package manager was made to alleviate development and user problems caused by multiple conflicting libraries. Anyone who has used Haiku over multiple releases has experienced this problem. One app needs version 1 of a certain library. Another app needs version 2 of the libraries. But version 2 breaks the first app. The package manager solves this problem.
Just last night I was trying to install the latest version of qemu. It requires libglib-2.0.o.0. So I went to Haikuware and downloaded the maxlibgcc4, and extracted libglib. But it doesn’t work, it’s the wrong version. If qemu were available as a hpkg there would be no problem. correct libs would install automatically.
The package manager is well designed and will have a nice pay off in the long run for Haiku. But a short term consequence is that it is pushing out this release. It also requires lots of old libraries and classic Haiku apps to be repackaged. This is frustrating the first time you encounter it. Over time we should repackage all our apps and everything will be much easier.
QEMU 2.1.0 is available via HaikuDepot.
Should probably add a task that tracks automated package building, and a task that tracks creation of a stable packaging branch to be used for the R1A5 release.
Kallisti, I love that chart!
I too have been trying to create a gant chart to create a schedule and understand dependencies of the next release. Some of the developers who have tasks for the release are a little reluctant to provide estimates on their work. So I would add some padding to any schedule to account for this. The release contains additional development, not just outstanding bugs.
An issue with many Linux distros is that the system software is not static with each major release, it is updated with the life of the version just like application software is. That can lead to many conflicts. Any updates that are made to Haiku sys libraries should be for security fixes only, nothing that changes functionality, in my opinion. That will also make it easier in the long term when one needs to know which apps are officially compatible with R1, or will only support R2 onwards, for example. Quite similar to what you find on the back of old Windows program boxes.
That can lead to many conflicts.
Hopefully the package manager will minimize those conflicts. It is quite powerful and manages dependencies.