[haiku-web] Reviewing/Updating/Combining howto guides for building/installing Haiku
- From: Urias McCullough <umccullough@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: haiku-web@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 26 Apr 2009 12:16:47 -0700
Disclaimer: I'm not sure if this really belongs on haiku-web, or
whether it should be documentation-related... but since this all ends
up being information that we distribute on the website, I feel it
should at least be brought to the attention of the website maintainers
so that we can attack it together.
Since there's a lot of the same information duplicated between pages
on haiku-os.org, I felt we need to combine the pieces that are
redundant into single "modular" pages, and possibly put together a
larger guide with "branches" to sub-guides per platform, or end result
(I.E. building/installing with host platforms X, Y, Z, and/or building
images for use on real hardware, VMWare, QEMU, etc.)
One thing that is almost exactly the same in every guide is how to
obtain the sources - we should just create a single guide for this
very step, and reference it from all other guides. That way if there
are any deviations in the instructions for getting sources between
platforms, those notes can be made on a single page rather than having
a separate page for every. Also, there are actually some different
methods now to obtain sources. Usually SVN is mentioned, but the URLs
used to obtain the source do seem to change from guide-to-guide - and
these different methods could be combined and explained in a single
location. Likewise, a user/developer could easily use git-svn if they
prefer git for source control and simple instructions could be
provided for that. Finally, there are actually tarballs that can be
downloaded and used to build images now as well, although this method
is probably less likely to produce a good result for a user - but it
could at least be mentioned.
Another thing that I find commonly asked is what packages to
install/use on different Linux flavors. Debian/Ubuntu are the only
ones currently supported by our instructions, but Fedora and Arch
often come up in IRC discussions, with slightly different installation
instructions for those. We should probably include some
flavor-specific instructions for these platforms as well.
The different installation methods are often confusing and people
don't understand the drawbacks or processes for each: In IRC, I hear a
lot of people asking why they can't just dd the image to a partition
and boot it - but there are many solutions for that now that aren't
documented very well anywhere. Furthermore, Installing Haiku from
BeOS/Zeta by copying the files to an empty BFS partition is no longer
as straightforward as it used to be - confusing a lot of people who
are still trying to use this method. There are probably half-dozen
different ways to "makebootable" a partition now - from using the
build tools, to using a haiku livecd, to using makebootabletiny for
linux or beos, etc. There are a few "hack instructions" floating
around explaining how to copy haiku_loader to zbeos in the proper
folder, then using BeOS/Zeta makebootable, booting into Haiku, which
then allows using Haiku's makebootable and removing the previous
hack... these are confusing methods, but people are figuring this
stuff out on their own in the absence of "proper instructions".
There is also a giant hole when it comes to Build Profiles and working
with UserBuildConfig - I think this information can be extremely
valuable to someone once they have compiled/installed Haiku - and we
should provide some linked guides to further tutorials on how to
modify the setup.
I have compiled a list of current haiku-os.org pages that I think need
a thorough review, updating with new instructions where necessary,
branching to various platform specific needs, and combining into a
single set of linked pages that are easy to navigate and locate from
the main page. Furthermore, I have provided some links to various
forum posts that have similar/duplicate information, and a few
external pages on other websites where information can be gathered and
used to enhance our own guides.
Feedback welcome. I would really like to work on this project myself,
but I find that my time is VERY scattered these days, and I cannot
focus on any one project for more than an hour or so at a time - often
preventing me from getting anything reasonable done, and I tend to
lose motivation as a result. Still, I may eventually start
combining/organizing this information into a single hyperlinked
resource here locally so that I may propose some structure in the
future that we can adopt, or not.
These two pages have links to a lot of the same "getting started"
stuff and seem to be mergeable:
http://www.haiku-os.org/node/161
http://www.haiku-os.org/node/250
These pages have references to source repo location and how to get it
(a lot of this info could be combined into a single guide, possibly
with subpages for additional details):
http://www.haiku-os.org/node/158
http://www.haiku-os.org/node/163
http://www.haiku-os.org/node/226
http://www.haiku-os.org/node/1781
http://www.haiku-os.org/node/2301
Pages describing how to install haiku and/or make it bootable on real hardware:
http://www.haiku-os.org/node/1845
http://www.haiku-os.org/node/2258
http://www.haiku-os.org/node/2398
These pages contain info about using emulation to run Haiku:
http://www.haiku-os.org/node/169
http://www.haiku-os.org/node/2317
These pages contain useful info that could be linked from the above
pages, or should at least be reviewed for accuracy:
http://www.haiku-os.org/node/1691
Forum posts containing duplicate/additional info for above pages:
http://www.haiku-os.org/node/917
http://www.haiku-os.org/node/1977
http://www.haiku-os.org/node/2097
http://www.haiku-os.org/node/2194
http://www.haiku-os.org/node/2461
http://www.haiku-os.org/node/2463
Other locations containing building/installation guides (we can't
change these, but we can improve our guide(s) perhaps using some of
the information):
http://www.jade.dti.ne.jp/~murai/haiku/userguide/ja/installation.html
http://www.streetpainter.net/haiku/downloads/how-to_build_haiku_on_ubuntu_8_10.txt
http://www.haikuware.com/latest/haiku-gcc4-and-hybrid-instructions
http://unixzen.com/index.php?url=article/view/running-haiku-os-in-virtualbox
http://darkwyrm.beemulated.net/haiku/HOWTO-Get-Haiku.htm
http://maurice.kaldience.com/?p=77
http://osx86.tistory.com/22
http://blog.sikosis.com/index.php?Build%20Haiku%20(BSD)
http://haikumax.org/wiki/index.php/An_Easy_Guide_to_Install_Haiku
- Urias
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