network

As recently noted by Haiku developer Axel Dörfler on the development mailing list, Teldar Corporation has open sourced their BeServed network file sharing solution for BeOS and donated the code to Haiku. We are now pleased to announce that the donated code has been merged into the Haiku repository, and is available here. The package, donated to Haiku under the MIT license, contains user management and servers for several operating systems including, Microsoft Windows® and Linux®. While Haiku already has a native networking file system that has been in the works by Ingo Weinhold, the availability of the BeServed code will allow cross-pollination between the two code bases, eventually resulting in а powerful and solid native networking solution for Haiku.

Kevin Musick of Teldar Corporation had these words for us: "I am pleased to donate BeServed in its entirety to the Haiku project. After Be, Inc.'s demise, BeServed was no longer commercially viable and the pressures of my career and a young family forced me to pursue other opportunities. However, I am encouraged to see Haiku's progress and the ongoing commitment of the community. While I no longer have the bandwidth to participate in the project, I hope that BeServed will be useful in some small way. Congratulations on your progress and best wishes for continued success!"

Thanks to the work of one of the most active code contributors lately, Hugo Santos, Haiku is getting a generic FreeBSD network driver compatibility layer that will allow FreeBSD network drivers to be compiled and used in Haiku with few, if any changes. At the time of this writing, not only has Hugo committed the compatibility layer to the Haiku tree, but he has also succeeded in building two FreeBSD drivers (if_em/Intel Pro 1000 and if_le/PCNet) which are now capable of running in Haiku.

IRC client Vision running on Haiku

Thanks to the dedicated work of lead developer Axel Dörfler, the Haiku network stack has started taking its first baby steps. After this commit, Axel himself and several others have reported successfully running the Vision IRC client in Haiku. Setting up the network requires editing a couple of configuration files, but it should be fairly straighforward for those brave enought to give it a try; Axel explains how to do it here.

Great work Axel!