[openbeos] Re: R2 on our machines before R1

  • From: Nik Derewianka <nick@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: openbeos@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Tue, 24 Sep 2002 13:46:07 +1000

Solaja, Zenja wrote:

<taken from OSNews and the article by Daniel Switkin>
<quote>
I have a strong feeling that OBOS R2 will arrive before R1. Why? It is
common knowledge that the last 10% of code takes 90% of the developers time.
Once OBOS is close enough to working, it will get compiled with GCC3.2+ and
be called R2, with lots of open-source apps targeting it. It wont officially
be called R2, but thats how it will be known amongst the community. I think
even OBOS teamleaders will realise that it's not worth the effort of
spending more time on R1 to get the last 8-10 closed source apps working,
especially not once we've got OpenProductive and Mozilla to work on R2. So
binary compatibility will be foregone, in order to move forward. Wasn't that
the BeInc philosphy, remove the cruft, the old bloated binary compatible
sludge, and start fresh. BeInc broke binary compatibility with almost every
major release.
</quote>

Hmm, there seem to be a lot of BONE and Dan0 only apps on BeBits lately.  I
have a feeling the same thing will happen with OBOS - R2 will be
unofficially out long before R1 (R2 being the Gcc3.2+ binary incompatible
version).

Something to consider, perhaps.


i think the osnews post got things a bit mixed up.

R2 may have binary compatibility changed, but that is just a relatively simple case of recompiling the source code with the new compiler. However binary compatability is neither here nor there, it doesnt constitute R2 (although it may be a feature of R2 or R3, hell it may even be a feature of R1). The thing that will make R2 different from R1 would most likely be API changes, additions etc.

It's not so much that they want to get the closed source apps working, nor being able to say whoopydo we are exactly like R5 but with the source available.. its more acknowledging the fact that coming up with a good, solid, logical design is where most of the time is spent and that 'borrowing' such a design will lead to an end result far far quicker than designing from scratch.

But just as the OSNews post seems to have gotten it wrong, so could i ;)



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