GSoC 2021: XFS file system support

Blog post by Xiaojie on Thu, 2021-05-20 14:19

About me I am Xiaojie Yi, currently majoring in Data Science and Big Data technology in Central China Normal University, China. I am happy to be selected as GSoC student this year and can work for Haiku to get more XFS filesystem support done. My mentors are CruxBox and Rene. When I decided to choose this project at the end of March, I knew very little about how everything works. Thanks for everyone’s help here!

Haiku activity report - March and April 2021

Blog post by PulkoMandy on Sun, 2021-05-02 08:53

This report covers revisions hrev54979-hrev55069. HaikuDepot Andrew Lindesay continues his work on HaikuDepot, fixing a glitch in redrawing of featured packages. He completed the removal of the custom list class, so HaikuDepot uses standard container classes from C++ or Haiku APIs. This makes the code more similar to other parts of Haiku and easier to maintain. With this rework done, Andrew is now working on new features. The first of these is a counter for views of packages, which will allow to imrpove the way we decide which packages are “featured” in HaikuDepot home screen.

My First Week with Haiku

Blog post by Animortis on Tue, 2021-04-27 09:15

As you boot your first non-Windows, non-Unix system, you may have a moment when you wonder if this thing is going to work. It’s not from the same family of systems you’re used to: It’s Haiku, and it’s totally different and unique. The great part, though, is when it works better than you could’ve possibly imagined. And when I sat down with Haiku last week, I knew I had something special.

An Update from the Promotion Team

Blog post by jt15s on Mon, 2021-03-22 16:08

It’s been almost three months since I posted about the Haiku Promotion Team, and the response to my initial post has been amazing and exceeded my expectations! There are now six of us (excluding myself) on the Haiku Promotion Team: scott_pupolo18 stoltenberg tthoms mbrumbelow shaka444 fox14 The Team communicates regularly through a private group chat on the Haiku forums, and stoltenberg has started up a kanban board, which you can view publicly here (Just ignore the login prompt that pops up once you open the kanban).

Haiku activity report - February 2021

Blog post by PulkoMandy on Mon, 2021-03-08 08:53

This report covers revisions hrev54947-hrev54978 (that was a quiet month in Haiku) HaikuDepot Andrew Lindesay continues his work on cleaning HaikuDepot sources and removing a custom-made List class to use standard (BeAPI and C++ stl) containers. There were some regressions in the process, that were found and identified. He also fixed various other bugs. non-x86 ports tqh is working on the 64bit ARM port, doing the package bootstrap, fixing the compiler configuration, and adding missing pieces of platform specific code.

Haiku Survey February/March 2021

Blog post by jt15s on Thu, 2021-03-04 19:54

Hi all, hope you are all having a great start to March! kallisti5 has put together a survey to help determine the priorities the Project should focus on for the immediate future. If you haven’t already, we would really appreciate if you filled out the survey - it is 100% anonymous and you do not have to enter any personal details. You can fill out the survey here. Please do not hesitate to give your feedback on Haiku in the survey - your feedback can influence decisions we make in the future.

A Brief Look Inside HPKG

Blog post by apl on Sun, 2021-02-28 12:00

The Haiku operating system has a packaging system that leverages a clever file format called HPKG. This article provides a simplistic overview of how the file format is structured. Installing and Uninstalling HPKGs To get a package installed on their Haiku computer, a user would download a package file in a format called HPKG. The user would typically do this via the HaikuDepot desktop application or by using the pkgman command line tool.

Icculus Microgrant 2020

Blog post by kallisti5 on Tue, 2021-02-23 14:08

Haiku, Inc. is proud to announce being the target of the Icculus Microgrant program for 2020. We would like to thank Icculus, and all of the wonderful folks who have donated to Haiku, Inc. over the years. Your continued donations help keep us working on what we love, and help us continuously grow and develop the ideal personal computing operating system.

Haiku activity report - January 2021

Blog post by PulkoMandy on Sat, 2021-02-06 10:53

Hello everyone, apparently we made it to 2021! This year we will see the 20th anniversary of Haiku. This report covers hrev54806-hrev54947. Architectures, ports, bootloaders PulkoMandy fixed the build of the openfirmware bootloader for PowerPC. It had been broken by changes for SPARC support. The openfirmware code to set up the splash screen was also fixed to work on sparc. tqh continues his work on cleaning and simplifying our EFI support.

Debugging RISCV-64 bootloader in QEMU

Blog post by kallisti5 on Sun, 2021-01-17 09:36

Debugging early bootloader code can be extremely difficult. The lack of printf and other classical black-box debugging tools means you’re limited to one of the following methods of debugging lockups: Arm chair debugging, Changing code, compiling, booting, repeat. Using GDB or another debugger tool and stepping through code watching outcome. Obviously #2 above is more ideal than #1. Welcome to debugging by attaching gdb to qemu! The steps below really should apply to any architecture.