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Application Level API Incompatibilities with BeOS

Haiku R1 (x86) was designed and is being implemented to be binary and source compatible with applications written for BeOS R5 (x86) to a large extent, but not the other way around. In some cases we deliberately broke source compatibility while at the same time maintaining binary compatibility. Here are some specific examples:

  • The "be" header path is gone - it's called "os" in Haiku; since it is always part of the default header search path anyway, you can always just remove it to let your software compile on both platforms, ie. replace:
    #include <be/interface/View.h>
    with:
    #include <interface/View.h>
    BView class definition and support data structures.
    or rather use the preferred method of omitting the first part and use:
    #include <View.h>
  • BeOS contains a deprecated add-ons/TrackerAddons.h header, and a header called add-ons/TrackerAddOns.h - Haiku only contains the latter.
  • Likewise, you'll find support/byteorder.h and support/ByteOrder.h in BeOS; Haiku only has ByteOrder.h.
  • If you have subclassed BString and if you are using its _privateData member, you might notice that it is no longer mentioned in the documentation. This is because it has been marked as private.
  • The undocumented functions defined in Alias.h from the storage kit are not implemented.
  • The private Device Map API (used by OpenTracker) has been replaced by a different API (Disk Device API).
  • The application debugging interface is conceptually similar, but nevertheless source and binary incompatible.
  • The file system API has changed; file systems that worked on BeOS will no longer work on Haiku.
  • Haiku is binary compatible with the Network Kit in BeOS R5 as well as BONE, ie. the BSD socket API as well as Be's proprietary C++ API. However, the ioctl() interface is not compatible with BONE (BeOS R5 did not have such an interface in the first place).
  • In several places we also dropped compatibility support for older BeOS versions (PR2, R3, R4), which BeOS R5 still featured.
  • The BArchivable class has been updated, and for some classes, unarchiving is slightly different.