development

Michael's Quad-core compiling GCC4.3.3

As many Haiku community members know, one major hurdle that has been making it difficult to port new software to Haiku has been the lack of an up-to-date GCC4 compiler. While a GCC 4.1.2 cross-compiler has been available now for some time, cross-compiling software for a GCC4-built Haiku can be painful and frustrating. What Haiku really needed was a native GCC4 toolchain to run on a GCC4-built Haiku install.

That time is now! A native Haiku GCC4.3.3 is now a reality.

Michael Lotz set out to tackle this task and the fruits of his labor have finally been committed to the Haiku repository for all to benefit from.

Michael Lotz details the process he used

To demonstrate what process was necessary to perform this task, he has written a detailed blog post recounting his experience. It's a long read, and certainly lists some confusing concepts. If you were at all curious what it would take, going from a GCC2-built Haiku to a GCC4-built Haiku with its own native compiler, the steps are all there.

During the process, Michael was even "fortunate" to find and submit a patch for a bug in libiberty. You will read about the strange behavior that led to the discovery in his blog post.

Dogfooding is important... Yummy!

If you're paying attention while reading his blog, you'll note that Michael is "dogfooding" during his Haiku development. Not only does he use Haiku for development purposes, but it's also the only operating system he uses currently. This suggests a couple of important points: a) Haiku is stable enough to use daily and develop in and b) Haiku developers are serious about Haiku, intending to use it as their daily OS. I know of several developers who use Haiku daily for various tasks, including development. This demonstrates a dedication to the quality they are pursuing, and increases the likelihood that even little annoying things about Haiku are going to get fixed eventually.

What does all this mean? What's next?

Freshly-built Haiku running GCC4

So, what should we expect from Haiku now that it has a native GCC4 toolchain?

I'm not sure - and that's the exciting part actually! This opens the door for easier porting of modern software, and more easily moves Haiku out of the "dark" GCC2 cloud that BeOS had lived under.

Several existing Haiku porting projects already require GCC4 to proceed and/or update to latest versions: Firefox 3, Webkit, VLC, and more.

Haiku already supports a "hybrid" environment where it is built with GCC2 for backward compatibility but also providing GCC4 libraries for future software support - or even more interesting: a GCC4-built Haiku with GCC2 libraries for backward compatibility. I think we'll see the latter becoming more common now with the availability of a native GCC4.

There are still some minor loose ends to tie up - such as providing the remaining development tools for a GCC4 Haiku (the GCC2-built ones will work, but they are not yet automatically installed with the "Development" optional package). Additionally, those who wish to build a GCC4 Haiku from within an existing GCC2-built Haiku might find it a little bit challenging. If you'd like to experiment, you may want to compile your own GCC4 Haiku from Linux, BSD, etc., or even wait for the availability of pre-built GCC4 images to appear.

These are very interesting developments, I hope you're as excited as I am at what the future holds :)

Update: as of now this change is in effect. If you are encountering any problems, read on to learn how to get help.

The website team is constantly trying to improve the user experience of the various websites we maintain. In order to improve our existing infrastructure, we are currently preparing a move to a new server infrastructure, which is offered by the Internet Systems Consortium. ISC is a non-profit that, amongst many other things, hosts kernel.org. We are more than grateful for this offer, which will improve our responsiveness, especially during exposure on Slashdot or OSNews.

This transition means that we have to redesign several aspects of the server infrastructure. One of these things is the user account handling. Because of the interactive nature of the main website and the bug tracker, much of the functionality is tied to user accounts. Up to now we have been able to use the user database of the main website to authenticate users against dev.haiku-os.org. However, in the new environment, we have to break this connection, until a better solution is implemented.

On Monday the 9th of June, users of dev.haiku-os.org will no longer be able to log in with the account they created on the main website. If you have ever logged in on dev.haiku-os.org, you will be affected by this change. You will receive an email with a new (randomly generated) password, which you will be able to change to your liking.

Read on for a short list of questions and answers.

Q: I use dev.haiku-os.org on a regular basis. How will this influence my account details on www.haiku-os.org?

A: Your account details on www.haiku-os.org will not be changed. You will keep the same username and password you always had, and you can continue to log in on www.haiku-os.org with those. Only your login information for dev.haiku-os.org will change.

Q: I have never used dev.haiku-os.org, but I would like to in the future. Should I log in now with my current account details before the change on Monday?

A: No. Monday a new link will appear which will allow you to register a new account on dev.haiku-os.org. You will be able to create a new account whenever it is necessary.

Q: I want to change my email address. Does this mean I have to do it in two places?

A: Yes. After Monday you will have to change your account details on both www.haiku-os.org and dev.haiku-os.org.

Q: I am sure I have once logged in on dev.haiku-os.org, but I did not receive a new password. Neither can I register a new account under my old user name. What now?

A: Please send an email to Niels Reedijk (login required) with your user name and a description of your problem.

Some will argue that these were just meaningless numbers, nevertheless we have reached significant milestones today: 1000th bug entry, and even better, 20000th subversion change. Recent subversion changes include many bug fixes and several additions in the file system area.

Several file system add-ons were ported from BeOS (Haiku has a different VFS interface):

• NTFS, using a GPLed libntfs, should even handle writing if you don't mind some risk of losing data.
• NFSv2, from an add-on once published on BeBits, should allow using files from Unix servers and maybe someday be used for network booting along with PXE.
• GoogleFS, a tech demo showing how queries can be handed over to Google.

In other additions, Marcus Overhagen finished implementing PXE support. PXE is the first step to providing network boot support. The kernel still needs to be programmed to mount the boot volume from the network.