[haiku-development] Re: Haiku alpha 1 release (draft)
- From: Simon Taylor <simontaylor1@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <haiku-development@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 4 Feb 2008 1:02:58 +0000
Niels Reedijk wrote:
> So the question is, is it time to start planning?
Absolutely, yes. Some planning has obviously been happening already (the
R1/alpha milestone in trac has existed for some time) but I think a
wider discussion on the aims and goals of the first release will be
worthwhile. From looking at action on the bug tracker, I get the feeling
that Axel is being a bit too much of a perfectionist with some of the
bugs being scheduled for the alpha!
Thom Holwerda wrote:
> 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.
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.
I suppose the key question is what do we expect the alpha release to be
used for. Personally I don't see anyone using it as a day to day system
- I would say it is more of a preview than a developer release. Once we
agree on the purpose, we can start thinking about what that means for
the tasks we need to accomplish before release.
> 2) For 'users'/hobbyists/enthusiasts [...] 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.
I'm not sure we should have a partitioner in the alpha. I'm not sure I
would trust the first "alpha" release of an OS to resize my partitions
with all my important data. If we destroy anyone's data it will be a
very hard impression to shift. If we get to the state where we can be
sure it would all go smoothly, I'd argue we're much closer to beta
territory! :)
I'd suggest a smooth read-only experience when booted from a Live-CD
should be a priority. USB-drive booting would also be great, though
probably shouldn't be a blocker for the alpha. The absolute best
solution, IMHO, is the nifty R5 trick of using an image file on a
windows or linux partiton, combined with a bootloader on CD. Dead easy
to install, much less chance of Haiku messing with existing data, as
fast as booting from a dedicated partition, and easily removed when the
tester has finished with no extra unwanted partitions lying about. I
have no idea how much work this would be, though.
Simon
ps: I now have 0 unread emails in my Haiku folders for the first time
since October. Sorry for ignoring you guys for that long, but I've now
read all >4000 messages I missed :)
pps: I'm going to take Jorge's bait, sorry!
Jorge G. Mare (a.k.a. Koki) wrote:
> Therefore, I would ask that you please refrain from making plans in an
> area that is not of your competence.
As far as I know none of the core devs had any experience writing an OS
when they started out - I'm glad no-one said the same thing to them!
Having defined roles should not mean that the responsible groups be
closed to suggestions from outside. It is meant to be an open project
after all.
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