OSNews: http://www.osnews.com/story/22903/Writing_Applications_for_Haiku Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2013, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Wed, 19 Jun 2013 01:34:31 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif OSNews.com http://www.osnews.com R1A1 http://www.osnews.com/thread?410455 http://www.osnews.com/thread?410455 R1A1 (the first Alpha) is starting to age quite a bit. For better performance try one of the recent nightles. (however avoid any nightlies between Feb 1 - 20th 2010.. there was major kernel work going on which caused data corruption/etc... that stuff should be fixed now though) Tue, 23 Feb 2010 02:52:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (kallisti5) Comments All very nice... http://www.osnews.com/thread?410459 http://www.osnews.com/thread?410459 ...but as far as I can see, a few rather fundamental things missing. My system is hardly new - about two-three years old - but it doesn't look like much of it will work. Multi-core processors, for example - recent forum posts indicate that even in 2010, that's considered too new a feature to be well supported. WiFi support - standard on pretty much any laptop for the past five+ years - is dubbed experimental. My video card (nVidia, but ATI/AMD is in the same position) is supported only by a Vesa driver.

Seems to me that for all that it might have a great design and user interaction, that doesn't matter so long as it's so massively deficient in hardware support. I'd be happy to try it out, but as far as I can tell, I'd be doing well if it boots. And if it does, I won't be able to do anything with it in the absence of an internet connection... Tue, 23 Feb 2010 03:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Delgarde) Comments RE: All very nice... http://www.osnews.com/thread?410460 http://www.osnews.com/thread?410460 What are you blathering about?

Did you even try a build of Haiku on your hardware?

*posted from a Dell Latitude D620, Core DUO, that happily boots Haiku, and uses _both_ cores beautifully thank you very much* Tue, 23 Feb 2010 03:09:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (bryanv) Comments RE: All very nice... http://www.osnews.com/thread?410462 http://www.osnews.com/thread?410462 Let's see: I have a Intel Core 2 Quad Extreme at home where I run Haiku. I also have an 8 core (4 physical + 4 hyperthreading) laptop that runs it. All cores are used as expected. I guess you may want to get your facts straight. Tue, 23 Feb 2010 03:19:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Bruno) Comments RE[2]: All very nice... http://www.osnews.com/thread?410465 http://www.osnews.com/thread?410465
What are you blathering about?

Did you even try a build of Haiku on your hardware?


No, because the information I can find on their website suggests there's not much point. Perhaps it's incorrect, but my comments were based on recent (i.e this year) posts in their forums indicating that while traditional SMP worked fine, multi-core didn't. Likewise, my comments about WiFi or video support come from the Haiku site and forums.

If their hardware support is better than I thought, perhaps they need to make it clearer what the current state of things is... Tue, 23 Feb 2010 03:33:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Delgarde) Comments RE: All very nice... http://www.osnews.com/thread?410466 http://www.osnews.com/thread?410466 BeOS supported 'n' CPUs, Haiku had the same aim.

Even BeOS can take advantage of however many CPU cores are available, provided it can support the chipset / memory.

From what I hear wireless works very well, but is not tested well enough to consider it anything more than experimental.

Also, before you judge a complex project such as an operating system, one should always consider how long it took the competition to attain the same level of completeness they are expecting.

For Windows, that would be 10 years for wireless, and then only because companies other than Microsoft did the work. Otherwise, you can move that all of the way up to 14 years ( XP ) - and that is with very poor inbuilt hardware support. But Microsoft need only worry about having the kernel boot and remain stable enough for 3rd party drivers to be installed.

For Linux, well... much longer.

Haiku has come an incredibly long way very fast thanks to 'merely' being, essentially, a reimplementation of a prior work - design decisions are mostly already made for you.

Think before you speak.

--The loon Tue, 23 Feb 2010 03:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (looncraz) Comments RE[3]: All very nice... http://www.osnews.com/thread?410467 http://www.osnews.com/thread?410467
If their hardware support is better than I thought, perhaps they need to make it clearer what the current state of things is...


No, not yet. Not for an alpha-quality OS. And precisely to avoid having a whole bunch of people with modern proprietary hardware lacking open specifications from whining about their hardware not working when they thought it would.

Haiku is in a state of heavy testing/development still. If you're not willing to "try" it without getting an explicit written guarantee in advance that you'll receive a certain "experience", then I think it's wrong for you. Please move along now. Tue, 23 Feb 2010 03:47:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (umccullough) Comments RE[2]: All very nice... http://www.osnews.com/thread?410468 http://www.osnews.com/thread?410468
Think before you speak.

--The loon


Like I say, I'd be interested in trying it out. But based on the limited info on the Haiku website, it doesn't seem like it's really in a state where that'd be worthwhile yet - not being able to connect to the internet is a bit of a show-stopper, given this is a desktop OS...

Maybe in another year, it might be mature enough to be worth a closer look. But not right now... Tue, 23 Feb 2010 03:51:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Delgarde) Comments RE[4]: All very nice... http://www.osnews.com/thread?410471 http://www.osnews.com/thread?410471
Haiku is in a state of heavy testing/development still. If you're not willing to "try" it without getting an explicit written guarantee in advance that you'll receive a certain "experience", then I think it's wrong for you. Please move along now.


Meanwhile, posting your "impression" based upon zero real-life experience, isn't going to help. Perhaps you should consider silence, or -questions- instead of statements full of unfounded, sweeping generalizations.

Oh wait, this is the internet. Most of us are stupid.Edited 2010-02-23 04:05 UTC Tue, 23 Feb 2010 04:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (bryanv) Comments Nice article! http://www.osnews.com/thread?410474 http://www.osnews.com/thread?410474 Also, interested readers might find DarkWyrm's "Learning to Program with Haiku"[1] blog posts interesting. Experienced programmers might find the first lessons too basic, but it's an interesting read anyway.

[1] http://darkwyrm-haiku.blogspot.com/2010/01/calling-all-haiku-develo... Tue, 23 Feb 2010 04:28:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (merkoth) Comments RE[4]: All very nice... http://www.osnews.com/thread?410487 http://www.osnews.com/thread?410487

No, not yet. Not for an alpha-quality OS. And precisely to avoid having a whole bunch of people with modern proprietary hardware lacking open specifications from whining about their hardware not working when they thought it would.


I agree. But that is still a real concern.

Two things I have said in the past about Haiku and OSNews: focus on the fundamentals and drop that extravagant advocacy.

If an OS hasn't even reached one release, it can not be "mature" or "stable". The status of "mature" is reached after years -- and decades. Keep the alpha-status bravely and keep experimenting, but do not try to go fishing to areas which clearly are not the core strengths. You don't need that much advocacy: those that want to code, find your system without it.

(And well, this is the destiny of any "alternative operating system". You get a thousand and one Linux people -- you know, those pretending to be "open-minded" -- bitching about things that do not work compared to their system that is developed by corporate overloads; probably the same people who have never contributed code but think that contributing noise is the same thing.) Tue, 23 Feb 2010 06:52:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (strcpy) Comments Additional resources http://www.osnews.com/thread?410490 http://www.osnews.com/thread?410490 One of the most important resources missed by the original author is the BeOS R5 Sample code (download http://www.bebits.com/app/3019). The sample code has everything from Hello world, my first window, to device drivers. Most of this is still 100% valid for Haiku.

Another important set of tutorials is embedded in the legacy BeNewsletters (http://www.haiku-os.org/legacy-docs/benewsletter/index.html). Here you can read tutorials and explanations from the BeInc engineers who actually designed and implemented various components. This resources gives you the WHY as well as the HOW. Tue, 23 Feb 2010 07:23:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Zenja) Comments I didn't do a lot of BeOS specific programming... http://www.osnews.com/thread?410495 http://www.osnews.com/thread?410495 ...when I ran BeOS... but I did contribute (I think it was ruby) a module to Pe ages ago. I also wrote an awesome website in Python, using the native db-file system for "blogging" back then... just drop an article into a folder and it became part of the site... and could also receive comments, again, written to the file system... it was neat to me anyway, back then.

BFS was so much fun! And I wish web servers could still be as simple as PoorMan was. ;) I actually used another web server for more complex stuff... it began with an X I believe, but I forget the name. It may still be around today on Windows.

Does BeShare still have regulars on there? You used to be able to find all kinds of goodies. Tue, 23 Feb 2010 08:34:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Tuishimi) Comments RE: I didn't do a lot of BeOS specific programming... http://www.osnews.com/thread?410496 http://www.osnews.com/thread?410496 LOL! Found one of my posts on BeBits looking for the "how to" for creating add ons for PE. Someone pointed me to some docs/example code and I was good from there:

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

How do you create...


By tuishimi - Posted on February 20, 2004 - 23:11:42 (#11162)
Current version when comment was posted: Nightly


...new syntax files?

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-==-

...oh and check it out! My old account still works! ;)

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

You are currently logged in as tuishimi.

If this is not your account, click here to relogin, or logout below. Tue, 23 Feb 2010 08:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Tuishimi) Comments Software on BeBits compatible with haiku http://www.osnews.com/thread?410497 http://www.osnews.com/thread?410497 So Would most of the software on bebits be compatible with Haiku? Seems to be quite a lot on there. Tue, 23 Feb 2010 08:57:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (mmueller) Comments RE: Software on BeBits compatible with haiku http://www.osnews.com/thread?410501 http://www.osnews.com/thread?410501
So Would most of the software on bebits be compatible with Haiku? Seems to be quite a lot on there.


Most, if not all, of the software on BeBits is now over at HaikuWare (the new owners/maintainers of BeBits). BeBits really needs to be shuttered, since BeOS is at the end of it's days. Tue, 23 Feb 2010 09:45:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Luposian) Comments RE: All very nice... http://www.osnews.com/thread?410502 http://www.osnews.com/thread?410502 This is how the alpha runs videos in VESA mode on an NVidia ION, which the author claims he couldn't manage in either Windows or Linux:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3dsDf_DkII

Btw, the alpha is really slow compared to the nightlies. Tue, 23 Feb 2010 09:57:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (TQH !) Comments Please uncheck ... http://www.osnews.com/thread?410504 http://www.osnews.com/thread?410504 "Object oriented micro-kernel operating system? Check. " Tue, 23 Feb 2010 10:10:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (fithisux) Comments RE[3]: All very nice... http://www.osnews.com/thread?410508 http://www.osnews.com/thread?410508 Why not install it in something like VirtualBox or KVM? Tue, 23 Feb 2010 10:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (aaronb) Comments RE[3]: All very nice... http://www.osnews.com/thread?410509 http://www.osnews.com/thread?410509
Like I say, I'd be interested in trying it out. But based on the limited info on the Haiku website, it doesn't seem like it's really in a state where that'd be worthwhile yet - not being able to connect to the internet is a bit of a show-stopper, given this is a desktop OS...

Maybe in another year, it might be mature enough to be worth a closer look. But not right now...


So run it in a virtual machine - testing it there won't even cost you the price of a black CDR Tue, 23 Feb 2010 10:51:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Laurence) Comments RE: All very nice... http://www.osnews.com/thread?410512 http://www.osnews.com/thread?410512 A little bird has informed me that a Haiku port of Nouveau and RadeonHD has recently started - expect an official announcement around BeGeistert time (April 10-11th). Tue, 23 Feb 2010 11:12:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Zenja) Comments s.t.e. http://www.osnews.com/thread?410515 http://www.osnews.com/thread?410515 since qt4 already works quite fine in haiku, I started to use the editor "s.t.e 0.1.1" from www.qt-haiku.ru , and I alredy like it, even if it's in an early development-stage. It would be nice to have a better IDE than the ide's that were mentionated by the author of this article. Qt-Creator I don't like that much for writing c++ code, because it pays too much attention on qt-projects, but not so much on normal c++ projects.
CodeBlocks I like more, but since wxwidgets is not ported to haiku, there is not hope for codeblocks on haiku.

But still I can not complain, s.t.e and PE and jam are quite enought for me at the moment. Tue, 23 Feb 2010 11:25:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (cipri) Comments RE: Please uncheck ... http://www.osnews.com/thread?410518 http://www.osnews.com/thread?410518 Which part? The micro-kernel part or the object oriented one?
Haiku, like BeOS, *is* an object oriented operating system.
Haiku, like BeOS, is *NOT* a micro-kernel operating system. It's a modular kernel.

So, please half-uncheck. or half-check, depends if you're a glass is half-empty or half-full guy ;-) Tue, 23 Feb 2010 11:37:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (phoudoin) Comments Haiku API v. OPENSTEP/Cocoa/GNUstep http://www.osnews.com/thread?410521 http://www.osnews.com/thread?410521 I have basically zero knowledge about Haiku, and am curious about its "cleanest programming API in the neighborhood" (as well as the "elegant messaging system" and pervasive multithreading). Unfortunately, I don't have the time to install the OS simply in order to learn about the API.

However, I am quite familiar with OPENSTEP and descendants -- can anyone with experience in both compare and contrast the two?

Thank you! Tue, 23 Feb 2010 11:46:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Hypnos) Comments developing http://www.osnews.com/thread?410536 http://www.osnews.com/thread?410536 A month ago I had zero knowledge about developing for Haiku (did some little programs for KDE earlier, so I had an idea).
Using Paladin and reading the BeBook, browsing some sample code it was not difficult to get my first little app in two weeks (its on Haikuware now). ;) Tue, 23 Feb 2010 14:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (pistooli) Comments RE: Additional resources http://www.osnews.com/thread?410538 http://www.osnews.com/thread?410538 The author here. I didn't miss it, it's under the Hello World paragraph. Tue, 23 Feb 2010 14:27:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (AndrewZ) Comments A 64-bit future? http://www.osnews.com/thread?410545 http://www.osnews.com/thread?410545 I applaud the effort that is going into re-creating BeOS (in my mind the best OS in history) but what are the plans in regards to 64-bit mode?

Everyone is going 64-bit these days for the wider registers (and more of them) as well as access to more than 4GiB of RAM. Does the Haiku project have this on their roadmap? Can this even be added without breaking the older (binary only) applications?

-Ian
www.returninfinity.com Tue, 23 Feb 2010 15:15:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (iseyler) Comments RE: A 64-bit future? http://www.osnews.com/thread?410548 http://www.osnews.com/thread?410548 Well, the BFS file system was 64-bit back in 1997. So in that regard BeOS was way ahead of the crowd. As far as 64-bit kernel, I think the goal is to at least get to Beta before putting resources into that. There are only so many kernel hackers on the Haiku team, so it's better to keep focused on the most important tasks.

But if you think about it, 64-bit for Haiku is not as important as 64-bit for Windows or Linux. Haiku is targeted to desktop applications, not server applications. Currently corporations are not running large server tasks like database, web serving, file serving that require lots of RAM. This could come in the future, but not just yet.

So currently it's not the highest priority. Tue, 23 Feb 2010 15:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (AndrewZ) Comments Expectations http://www.osnews.com/thread?410553 http://www.osnews.com/thread?410553 I thought this article would cover some basic BeAPI ( HAIPI ;) ?) and compiling topics. So, I'm a bit disappointed, but neverthelesse, some good source of links to usefuls stuff.

I tried the alpha on my (AMD based) computers but it didn't even boot. (Works in VMWare of course, but I dislike the speed there). Tue, 23 Feb 2010 15:50:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (electr0n) Comments RE: Expectations http://www.osnews.com/thread?410555 http://www.osnews.com/thread?410555
I thought this article would cover some basic BeAPI ( HAIPI ;) ?) and compiling topics. So, I'm a bit disappointed, but neverthelesse, some good source of links to usefuls stuff.

Hi electr0n,
The BeAPI is extremely well documented here in this reference:
http://www.haiku-os.org/legacy-docs/bebook/ .
I really didn't want to reinvent the wheel! Tue, 23 Feb 2010 16:11:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (AndrewZ) Comments RE: R1A1 http://www.osnews.com/thread?410560 http://www.osnews.com/thread?410560 I'd like to see a refreshed release as an ISO.

Plus, there's been a lack of news on the Haiku site. I'd like to know what things have been fixed or added without going through the changlogs or devlist posting.

A once a month status report like ReactOS usually does would be helpful to us non-programmer types. Tue, 23 Feb 2010 16:27:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Mage66) Comments RE: Expectations http://www.osnews.com/thread?410561 http://www.osnews.com/thread?410561 Try a more recent nightly build, also don't forget "Safe Mode" which you enter by pressing the`space bar at the start to boot.

One of my desktops is an AMD machine and it boots fine, it probably is not the CPU causing your problem.

Good Luck Tue, 23 Feb 2010 16:34:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Earl Colby pottinger) Comments RE[2]: R1A1 http://www.osnews.com/thread?410562 http://www.osnews.com/thread?410562 I may be a Beos/Haiku fans but even I would love to see a quarterly (4 times a year) review of the status of as many alternative OSes as possible.

Is anything going on with SkyOS for example? Tue, 23 Feb 2010 16:38:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Earl Colby pottinger) Comments RE: All very nice... http://www.osnews.com/thread?410563 http://www.osnews.com/thread?410563 Checkout:

http://dev.haiku-os.org/wiki/R1/ImprovementsSinceAlpha1 Tue, 23 Feb 2010 16:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Earl Colby pottinger) Comments RE: Please uncheck ... http://www.osnews.com/thread?410582 http://www.osnews.com/thread?410582 it is monolithic/hybriid not a microkernel. Tue, 23 Feb 2010 19:34:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (cb88) Comments RE[3]: All very nice... http://www.osnews.com/thread?410668 http://www.osnews.com/thread?410668

Like I say, I'd be interested in trying it out. But based on the limited info on the Haiku website, it doesn't seem like it's really in a state where that'd be worthwhile yet - not being able to connect to the internet is a bit of a show-stopper, given this is a desktop OS...

Maybe in another year, it might be mature enough to be worth a closer look. But not right now...


Limited info on the Haiku website? What info, specifically, are you looking for?

Not being able to connect to the Internet? Where did you get THAT idea? Sure, wireless connectivity is still limited to unprotected networks (no WEP or WPA/WPA2 yet), but Haiku will connect to the Internet just FINE, if you have a wired Ethernet connection! Web browsers include Firefox, Aurora, and NetSurf.

Need to know what hardware in your system is supported? Try a bootable CD image and see what happens.

Can't get an .iso to burn to CD? I can make one for you... of the latest revision, if you like. You want GCC2 or GCC4?

Alpha1 is getting dated. A lot has improved since then.

Haiku is FAR more "usable" than you think, even at it's current stage. You just need to give it a chance. Wed, 24 Feb 2010 04:46:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Luposian) Comments RE: All very nice... http://www.osnews.com/thread?410676 http://www.osnews.com/thread?410676 You may collaborate porting radeonhd driver from X to Haiku ;) Wed, 24 Feb 2010 07:54:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Michael Oliveira) Comments RE[3]: All very nice... http://www.osnews.com/thread?410710 http://www.osnews.com/thread?410710 Well the information is probably very much on the safer side. I've successfully ran Haiku on a P4, Amd X2 4400+ (dual) and a Core i5 (quad). Wed, 24 Feb 2010 12:08:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Valhalla) Comments