Suggestion Box

Would be nice to get support for multiple monitors along with more monitor resolutions. I don't want to create a ticket but what exactly does the development team need to implement this ?

This is just a collection of ideas I would like the haiku package manager to have.

The list of all installed packages would be stored in a database, such as sqlite (being fast, constantly developed and suitable for storing this kind of information).

Now when a person downloads and installs a package the database of installed software is updated to store information on the files installed, much like the box package manager does. In addition, for each file belonging to a package and written to the file system there are a set of mandatory file attributes that every package has to store on installation. This is not something that a bundle/package creator has to worry about, it is handled completely transparently by the package manager that writes the attributes to the fs.

For an example every file belonging to a package that that gets installed via the package manager would have mandatory attributes such as Package ( this file belongs to this package ), version and a hash sum. Other mandatory attributes could be added, the aforementioned are just examples.

This approach has some advantages. For example if you are browsing a file system and wonder what some file is or what package it belongs to or just about any information that is present in the form of mandatory attributes, you can just issue a simple "lsattr file.so" command to see all available information. This could also prove to be a powerful feature when using the "query" command. You don't necessarily need separate tools to find information on Packages/Files. Instead you are essentially just using the advanced features that the haikufs has. In other words Programs are not just a collection of zipped files you unpack under your home directory and forget. They become part of the file system and OS. You can install software under a common folder that is available to everyone using the system or users belonging to some user group or just you. The person installing the software can decide as far as his/hers privileges on the system allow. The point of this idea is "coherency".

Another thing is that if the package database gets accidentally wiped or corrupt or a file gets accidentally deleted, you can still have a working system but you don't have any means to uninstall software or know what is installed on your system.
a package recovery tool that scans the whole file system looking for files and checking their attributes can rebuild the database from scratch and "restore" your system to a working state. The hash sum is something that I'm not sure whether it's needed. It could be used in cases like file corruption and virus infections (though a virus can easily bypass this).

For system updates IMHO multiuser capabilities with access permissions would be needed. The package manager in charge of installing .pkg "bundles" would not have access to files belonging to the System/Core package. This just to ensure that a badly created / malicious package wouldn't overwrite important system files.
The system "updater" responsible for updating and extending the core functionality of the OS would instead run with full administrator rights.

For Packages that want to update themselves (and I personally prefer this method having used both windows and various linux distributions and like the simplicity of just having a "Remove Program" option instead of a centralized solution) there might be a need for an API for the package manager to handle these cases so that all file attributes (hashes, versions, all additional attributes) are updated to the filesystem and database accordingly. a Package can of course bypass this but I would consider that "lazy programming".

The Deskbar application is vital to the usage of Haiku. Without it, it is almost impossible to do anything. When it randomly crashes (as it did for me), one must search the filesystem for the application to restart it (for those who do not know, /boot/system/Deskbar). Haiku should detect when it crashes and automatically restart it.

P.S. New to Haiku. It is pretty awesome. Keep up the good work.