Haiku Contract Report: September 2021

Blog post by waddlesplash on Sat, 2021-10-02 19:14

We already had an activity report for this month … but as I am now working on Haiku full-time thanks to the generous donations of readers like you (thank you!), a second report is in order, containing more detail on what (and some of the ‘why’) I worked on that the activity report merely summarizes.

Haiku Activity Report: Performance Edition

Blog post by waddlesplash on Sun, 2019-08-04 23:00

Welcome to the monthly report for July 2019! Most of the more interesting changes this month have been from myself in the way of performance optimizations, so I’m writing the progress report this month so I can talk about those in some detail. This report covers hrev53238-hrev53337 (158 commits.) Optimizations! Now that Haiku has entered the beta phase, and after the work over the past year or so spent fixing the majority of known kernel crashes and other general instabilities, it is high time we start paying more attention to the whole system’s performance.

Haiku monthly activity report, May 2019

Blog post by waddlesplash on Sat, 2019-06-08 13:00

Welcome to the monthly report for May 2019! PulkoMandy is once again busier than usual, so I’m filling in. This report covers hrev53094-hrev53174 (120 commits.) Applications & Libraries korli changed how runtime_loader handles weak symbols to be more in line with the behavior of other operating systems. waddlesplash tweaked “strace” to print syscall names plainly, i.e. without the prefixed “kern”. mmu_man committed changes to allow loading the BControlLook from an add-on, and added a setting to the Appearance preferences for it.

Most long-standing XHCI (USB 3.0+) issues resolved!

Blog post by waddlesplash on Fri, 2019-03-08 23:00

Last month, I sat down and decided to at the very least attempt to fix our XHCI (USB 3 host controller) bus driver. Issues with it have been the most significant problem users have been facing, as most hardware made post-2012 has an XHCI chip as the system’s primary USB chip, and most hardware made post-2014 (or so) has exclusively an XHCI chip and no EHCI (USB 2.0) or prior chipsets (which we do support very well.

Haiku monthly activity report, January 2019

Blog post by waddlesplash on Fri, 2019-02-01 19:00

Welcome to the second monthly report for 2019! PulkoMandy and a few others are representing Haiku at FOSDEM, so, I’m covering for him yet again. (Hooray, more writing about myself in the third person!) This report covers hrev52707-hrev52827 (213 commits.) Applications & Libraries jackburton patched Terminal to use a float when computing font widths. This fixes the use of non-fixed-width fonts in at least some scenarios, though there are others unsolved as of yet.

Haiku monthly activity report, September/October 2018

Blog post by waddlesplash on Wed, 2018-10-31 21:04

Welcome to the tenth monthly report for 2018! PulkoMandy is busy packing and then travelling to BeGeistert, and most of the work these past two months was done by myself anyway, so, I’m covering for him once again. (Writing about yourself in the third person is fun!) This report covers hrev52310-hrev52462 (~250 commits.) R1/beta1! As you’ve probably already seen, heard, felt, … etc., Haiku R1/beta1 was released at the end of last month!

R1/beta1 release plans - at last

Blog post by waddlesplash on Sun, 2018-08-19 23:16

At last, R1/beta1 is nearly upon us. As I’ve already explained on the mailing list, only two non-“task” issues remain in the beta1 milestone, and I have prototype solutions for both. The buildbot and other major services have been rehabilitated and will need only minor tweaking to handle the new branch, and mmlr has been massaging the HaikuPorter buildmaster so that it, too, can handle the new branch, though that work is not quite finished yet.

Haiku monthly activity report - 05/2018 (ft. LibreOffice!)

Blog post by waddlesplash on Wed, 2018-06-06 17:51

Welcome to the fifth monthly report for 2018! … Yes, I know, PulkoMandy usually does these. But he’s got WebKit fixes to do, and not much spare time, so this month at least he gets a break while I cover for him. This report covers hrev51922-hrev51985. Applications PulkoMandy merged a bunch more changes from upstream WebKit and updated the version in the nightly builds. It’s a little unstable at present as a result (though he has some fixes coming soon.

New package repositories are now enabled by default

Blog post by waddlesplash on Sun, 2017-12-10 12:14

During this year’s coding sprint in Toulouse (which I was able to attend, thanks to being in Europe on a study-abroad program), I spent a lot of time massaging HaikuPorts to generate a consistent-enough state of packages for us to switch to them by default, and then making the in-tree changes necessary for the switch. Thanks to this and mmlr’s comprehensive overhaul of the HaikuPorter Buildmaster over the past couple months, we have finally switched to the new repositories by default as of hrev51620.

The Lunduke Hour had me on as a guest to talk about Haiku

Blog post by waddlesplash on Tue, 2017-02-07 09:56

Yesterday, The Lunduke Hour, hosted by Bryan Lunduke (perhaps most famous for his “Linux Sucks” presentations), had me on as a guest to talk about the state of Haiku and where we go from here: Bryan’s been a longtime fan of Haiku (some of the old-timers might remember when he reviewed R1a3 on the Linux Action Show…), and it was a lot of fun to chat with him for an hour about what’s been going on over the past few years, and where things are headed.