[GSoC 2017] Preferences GUI Refactoring - Final Report

Hello World.

This is Anirudh. Here’s my final overall report of my work during Google Summer of Code 2017. My sincere thanks to waddlesplash and Sean Healy, for their excellent mentorship. They immediately responded, and assisted me whenever I needed help. I’m grateful to the Haiku team, community members and my fellow GSoC colleagues for their help, constructive criticism, reporting bugs and helping the project shape better.

Link to the source code/repo: https://github.com/HaikuArchives/SuperPrefs

List of all blog posts: https://www.haiku-os.org/blog/anirudhm

List of all commits: https://github.com/AnirudhMurali/SuperPrefs/commits/master

Project demo:

Achieved so far

• Control Panel Interface
• Categorization of Preflets
• Inclusive of both System Prefs and Custom User Prefs
• Localized Preflets’ Name Search
• Related Keywords Search
• Apps View [Needs improvement]

What’s left to do

• Localization for Related Keywords and additional keywords
• Option to enable Apps View only if needed
• Option to set Custom Categories
• Making individual preferences better [Ironically the original goal]
• Contribute to Haiku in one way or other

Things learnt

Technically

• How to code and how not to code
• Better Object Oriented Software Engineering approaches
• Exposure to how open-source organizations work
• Of course, Git, C++, Standard Template Library, Haiku API

Non Technically

• Consistency > Pace
• Late nights cause Burnout
• Multi tasking Academic work and GSoC
• Effective Communication through IRC, Mailing lists
• Documentation

If you’re a student and reading this for future GSoC programs, I’d highly recommend you to submit a proposal for Haiku. So, it’s been an amazing summer, thanks again Haiku and the Google Summer of Code team.

Anirudh | LinkedIn