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

[Stephan Assmus <superstippi@xxxxxx>]

Rene Gollent wrote (2008-02-04, 03:12:54 [+0100]):
> > I'm not convinced this is actually necessary - I wouldn't expect the 
> > devs to shift their development platform to Haiku after the alpha, so 
> > self-hosting is more a symbolic milestone that demonstrates the 
> > stability of lots of different OS subsystems. Linux is a very nice 
> > development platform for Haiku - rock solid, quick at compiling, and 
> > allows fast turn-around using emulators.
> >
> 
> The problem is that viewpoint is a bit of a copout. You will not find 
> anywhere near as many bugs in the base system if you don't force it to do 
> any heavy work. Building the entire thing is one of the heaviest tasks 
> you can throw at it, as it stresses the VM, disk and scheduler subsystems 
> quite heavily, and will result in a lot of latent bugs being discovered 
> that would otherwise remain hidden in day-to-day use. Also, it would 
> increase the incentive to improve performance in the areas that are 
> lacking with respect to build speed, which isn't anywhere near as high a 
> priority if you just use Linux to build instead. Also there's a lot of 
> characteristics you really can't test well within a VM environment, i.e. 
> you can only get a cursory idea of UI responsiveness in a VM due to the 
> additional overhead. And, speaking as a dev, if I want to try and start 
> finding bugs in Haiku's kits by writing apps against them, the last thing 
> I want to do is have to reboot a VM every time I want to make some 
> changes to an app. Consequently I'd say self-hosting is a relatively 
> important goal if you really want to be able to attract more assistance.

Absolutely agreed. Add to that the fact that most of the servers can be 
restarted. We have an unfinished Media Server / Kit. Marcus said he would 
much rather continue to work on it under Haiku, and I can absolutely 
understand that. It's not only third party apps, but also many parts of 
Haiku which will be more fun to develop under Haiku. We developers are the 
most likely to be able to do something with Haiku - if we can actually use 
it for compiling. And this long time usage will uncover more glitches, bugs 
or annoyances.

Best regards,
-Stephan