FreeLists / haiku-development / [haiku-development] Re: Haiku alpha 1 release (draft)

[Thom Holwerda <slakje@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> I would like to share with you a list I made of all the steps I think
> need to be made from now to a release of alpha 1. Before I do this, I
> would like an informed opinion from you of where we stand. I know we
> have a 'it is done when it is done' mentality, but without actually
> defining 'done', we could wait a long time.
As an outsider, I'd say two things are quite important for an alpha 1  
release - one from the developer's perspective, the other from the  
'user'/hobbyist/enthusiast perspective.
1) For devs: the obvious self-hosting thing. Axel and others have  
mentioned this one quite a few times, and since an alpha can be seen  
as a developer release, it would make sense to have this in place.  
People interested in Haiku development could develop in Haiku itself.  
Seeing I'm no developer myself (no shit), I have little idea on where  
Haiku stands on this one.
2) For 'users'/hobbyists/enthusiasts: some installer/partitioner of  
some kind. Haiku running native, installed 'by itself', would make it  
a lot of ordinary users (non-devs) interested in Haiku - instead of  
people who try the VMware image once and forget about it. These are  
the people that create mindshare, but these are generally also the  
people that do not have the knowledge, nor the will, to create  
partitions under Linux, format them, copy the Haiku tree over, make  
it bootable, etc. This process needs to be doable from the alpha 1 CD  
itself.
Then again, I'm relatively unknown with release processes and the  
likes, so feel free to tear the reasoning above apart.


Thom