[haiku-development] Re: Beta1 and R1 release plan
- From: Richie Nyhus <richienyhus@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: haiku-development@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 8 Nov 2014 01:47:20 +1300
Hi Adrien,
> BeSnow is already gone from the image. Paladin still needs a lot of work
> to make it better usable, however a package is already available for it
> and could easily be preinstalled on the install media.
I know. In fact I have got to admit that I fist pumped the air back in
September when I saw that you had removed BeSnow from the default image. =)
[1]
Regardless, BeSnow was only an example. I am hoping that the bundled apps
in the next release will be based on what you decide as release manager,
rather than on conventions.
> It is not up to the developers to handle this. You applied to be the
> marketing guy in another mail, I think, but there is no official
> endorsement process for this. Just take actions you think are needed. It
> would indeed be very great to have someone taking care of this again.
My overall critique was not aimed solely on developers, but project wide at
an organisational level. It was also ment to be positive criticism rather
than anything snide on my behalf.
On the community management side I am interested in what users/supporters
feel are the stumbling blocks or hurdles that stop their engagement.
However the desires of core devolpers on communty issues are also an
important factor.
For example, there is an open source community tool called Discourse [2]
which is meant to replace the traditional forums and mailing lists, but
also to meant to appeal to enterprise and non-profits. It is built from the
ground up to be a hybrid mailing list/fourm that allows people to send and
receive messages by both email and the web UI. This might be a way of
closing the gap between the forum and the mailing lists.
Charging ahead would be pointless as devolper feedback on matters like this
is critical. I can not answer the question myself of whether Haiku
devolpers would be intrested in using Discourse (if it was used for end
user and non-development usage).
Of course for non dev related things I can just go bother the web team
instead. ;-)
> There isn't that much work there at this point. Moving to 64bit is
> essentially flipping a switch, we are already providing nightly images
> and the system is as usable as the 32bit version.
My assertion of it being 2/3 finished was an attempt to (badly) factor in
the work needed to get the same amount of software in HaikuDepot as 32bit.
Plus I never saw a final decision on how much backwards compatibility is
appropriate between R1 and R2.
> The switch to clang needs slightly more work. Most things compile fine
> with clang already, and the remaining tasks are cleaning our code to be
> warning-free with clang and not use gcc extensions anymore. This does
> not bring anything new to users, however, and is work that can be done
> in the background and without too much planning. So I don't see how that
> would give direction for R2. But don't worry, there are pleinty other
> ideas on what to do there.
Last I heard Haiku ran into kernel panics while booting when trying to
selfhost with Clang. But Jonathan Schleifer informed me the other day that
he has never ran into this problem, so it looks like it is fixed. Nice to
see how far it has come.
Are the other Idea in new message thread that is yet to come?
> I still think that doing point releases of an alpha is nonsense. Alphas
> should be drops of the current state of development for testing purposes
> only, and come with no support of any kind.
A point release of an alpha is more of a bandaid/plaster than a real
releases. On whether that was appropriate to do last year, well I take back
what I said after thinking about it again, as it probably wasn't
appropriate. [3]
> There is a more general problem of our website being badly organized,
> making it hard to find any kind of document, even when you know what you
> are looking for.
I agree. My idea of a contributor guide was merely a workaround to this
problem.
Some parts of the Ubuntu website is quite good, although other parts are
pretty shocking. But they do a good job of directing different individuals
to different targeted parts of their website that better fits their
interests and skills.
I would be intrested in making a start in the guides section for starters,
but my editing permissions on drupal are quite random (some articles or
nodes I can edit, others I can not edit even if I created them in the first
place).
> This is what is holding the release. The process of building and
> uploading packages will be automated, so everything with a working
> recipe gets in the depot.
How do you add a builder for haikungfu.net ? Though Buildbot? I might be
able to help by running a builder 24/7 thoughout December.
> Cleaning up the apps on HaikuArchives is sometimes a challenge requiring
> better knowledge of Haiku internals than writing apps from scratch. I
> don't think this is a matter of feeling confident, but a preference on
> development workflow. Some people prefer starting from scratch, others
> are more confortable starting from existing code.
Of course there is a big difference between hacking on JamMin and hacking
on abiword (good going btw), but even on the more challenging apps users
can do QA and submit bugs and enhancements.
> Help welcome on managing those.
Apart from the login details, some websites also require offical email
adresses (like alternativeto which uses the old logo [4]) and others
require a copy of Haiku inc's charty documention (like facebook/Causes).
I just have to wait for the board to have its next meeting.
> What's the point of this? What would you expect
> to come out of it?
Sorry I should of been more clear. This would be more about tinkerers
playing around with Haiku on a cheap x86 SOC device, aimed at the same kind
of people who got a Raspberry Pi in 2012. The same people who still ask on
the forums about whether Haiku been ported to ARM6 yet.
The comment about putting it in the hands of a few of the devs was more
about making sure it was " guaranteed to work", while the comment about a
mini fundraiser meant something like a "freedomsponsors" unofficial bounty
for it [5].
Talking of official fundraisers, what do you think of using something like
Causes [6] to do some "targeted" fundraising, such as raising money to
extend your paid contract? Being less abstract and more definitive, people
might be more likely to donate.
----
Cheers,
Richard.
[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fist_pump
[2] http://www.discourse.org/about/
[3] http://youtu.be/esXJN_OTkmU
[4] http://alternativeto.net/software/haiku/
[5] https://freedomsponsors.org
[6] https://www.causes.com/back-a-ranger
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