Alpha 1 Proposals

On the the 7th of August, Axel Dörfler started a discussion on the things to do in the thread ​Haiku R1/alpha decisions. Here's a summary of that discussion. Axel called for:

The aim of this thread should be to compile a complete list of things
we want to have in the first alpha release, be it feature or software.

• This page lists concrete proposals that came out of that discussion.
• Every item should have an adopter. This person is responsible for the implementation (which of course does not mean he/she has to do it themselves).
• This page is open for editing for all users that are in the developers group. Feel free to register as adopter, tweak your adopted proposals or add new ones.
• This page will be marked read-only on Sunday at 13:00 GMT.

General Proposals

The proposals are general when they apply to procedures, requirements that cannot be quantified or qualified, or tendencies that are not covered by sections deeper down.

Prop # 1: All known bugs that cause data corruption need to be resolved before the release

Adopted by: no one

• ​BGA:

  Speaking in general terms, the important thing, even for an alpha, is 
  that we have no know bug that can cause data corruption. As long as 
  we reach a point where we are reasonably certain that this is the case, 
  everything else can be attributed to it being an alpha. :)
  

Prop # 2: Name the release 'Developer Release 1'

Adopted by: no one

Prop # 3: Create a welcome package

Adopted by: no one

• Have links on the desktop that refer first time experimenters to things that they can do next.
• Have a short 'what to do next'-guide

Prop # 4: Release as the GCC 2/4 hybrid

Adopted by: no one

The release should be done in such a way that applications compiled with GCC 2 and 4 can run out of the box.

Prop # 5: Make sure that a live Haiku install can be updated

Adopted by: no one

Prop # 6: Recruit a Release Coordinator that investigates the needed steps

Adopted by: nielx

• The release coordinator will be a community volunteer that investigates the required work to prepare for a release, and report this info back to the developers and Haiku Inc.
• Areas of investigation should be marketing, bandwith and mirrors, procedures to streamline the release.
• The volunteer does not have to be a developer. Community members are encouraged to join in the process.
• The volunteer is selected per developer vote.

Prop # 7: Set a preliminary freeze date for alpha 1

Adopted by: nielx

Set a date on which the source repository is freezed and where alpha 1 will be finished.

Prop # 8: Finish and Include Swap File Support

Adopted by: bonefish

Swap file support is GSoC project. It should be got into a reasonably working state and enabled by default. Without swap file support machines with less than about 800 MB RAM won't be able to build Haiku.

Prop # 9: Fully Integrate I/O Scheduler

Adopted by: bonefish

As reported the CD boot is extremely slow. Finishing and fully integrating the I/O scheduler should improve this situation significantly.

Prop # 10: Read-ahead feature

Adopted by: no one

Prop # 11: Recruit release manager

Adopted by: no one

The release manager should be responsible for the creation and maintenance of the R1/Alpha1 branch. That might also mean identifying changesets against trunk that should be applied or even ported to the branch once it is set up.

Prop # 12: ATA vs. IDE bus manager

Adopted by: no one

There are still some pending issues with our "ide" bus manager. The "ata" bus manager seems to work better, but a) takes a long time to boot, and b) does not yet implement DMA. We should either fix "ide", or complete "ata" for the alpha.

See ticket #1444 for some details on this.

Software proposals

Prop # 20: Include the Development tools

Adopted by: nielx

The development tools currently in the 'Development' package should be included. Currently that means: (​Rene Gollent)

• gcc 2.95.3
• autoconf-2.61
• automake-1.10.1
• bison-2.3
• flex-2.5.35
• jam
• libtool-1.5.26
• texinfo-4.11
• Perl 5.10

Prop # 21: Include Firefox

Adopted by: nielx

Include the latest version of Firefox. nielx: "I have built Firefox before, and I have even submitted one or two patches to it, so I will take care of having a good binary that can be distributed with the alpha."

Prop # 22: Include OSS

Adopted by: mmu_man

Include the OSS drivers ported by mmu_man. TODO:

• fix crash on media_server restart, dunno if it's OSS fault or device_manager though.
• blacklisting drivers that compete with native ones. easy to do either at settings file level or at compile time (commenting 1 line). This is needed to avoid KDL or hard lockups.

Prop # 23: Include BePDF

Adopted by: Michael Pfeiffer

Prop # 24: Include a copy of the original BeBook

Adopted by: no one

We can include the ​BeBook as released by Access.

Prop # 25: Include a special Haiku-only unlocked version of Wonderbrush

Adopted by: umccullough

Offered by Stephan Assmus

Prop # 26: Include a Webkit-based browser

Adopted by: Ryan Leavengood

I will be working on this now, but would not want this to be a blocker for the Alpha. Worse case it can go in Alpha 2.

Other options:

• Firefox
• NetSurf but it's not yet stable

Prop # 27: Include Vision

Adopted by: anevilyak

Prop # 28: Include CVS

Adopted by: HaikuPorts

Prop # 29: Include Subversion

Adopted by: nielx

Prop # 30: Include Git

Adopted by: HaikuPorts

Prop # 31: Include Python

Adopted by: HaikuPorts'

Prop # 32: Include 'box'

Adopted by: no one

Prop # 33: Include a Makefile engine to build existing projects

Adopted by: no one

Prop # 34: Include Pe

Adopted by: no one

Requires fixing of #2231.

Prop # 35: Include a MDR version with SSL support

Adopted by: axeld

Prop # 36: Include yasm or nasm

Adopted by: HaikuPorts

yasm is obviously already ported: ​http://ports.haiku-files.org/wiki/dev-lang/yasm/0.7.1/1

Distribution

All proposals that apply to the physical distribution of the operating system.

Prop # 50: Distribute as ISO that functions as LiveCD

Adopted by: no one

This one should be able to install by itself.

Plain single-track ISO, or usual boot ISO + BFS track ?

Prop # 51: Distribute as Live USB stick

Adopted by: mmlr

Prop # 52: Distribute as image for emulators

Adopted by: no one

For QEMU and VMWare.

Prop # 53: Find mirrors and seed torrent for distribution

Adopted by: no one

PR/Marketing

Prop # 70: Create announcement

Adopted by: no one

Jorge:

Submit to mailing lists (general/dev) + website.
This would be better coming from a (prominent) Haiku developer.
I can work on this with whoever adopts this task.

Prop # 71: Create a press release (based on #70)

Adopted by: Jorge

Prop # 72: website changes

Adopted by: no one

• Make availability of alpha release obvious on front page
• Add prominent links to download and Trac
• Modify "Downloads" page to show latest release + mirrors

Prop # 73: hardware matrix

Adopted by: no one

A list or database of the hardware Haiku supports should be available on our website with or before the alpha release. It would be nice if this was user-extendible, and allowed comments, too.