[GSoC 2017] Adding write supports for Btrfs

Blog post by HyChe on Mon, 2017-05-08 13:49

Hello everyone,

My name is Hy (Trac: hyche, freenode IRC: ugen), and this first blog is about my introduction and Btrfs. This is the first time I participate in Google Summer of Code, I also know Haiku through this event. My project in this summer is write supports for Btrfs and my main mentors are mmu_man (François Revol) and tqh (Fredrik Holmqvist).

During the community bonding period, I will

  • Set up my development environment (userlandfs and fs_shell).
  • Dig into the codebase to know more about Haiku kernel, how other support filesystems work and derive it for Btrfs.
  • Try to fix issues to get me familiar with the existed works.

Btrfs

Btrfs (B-tree filesystem) is a filesystem uses B+trees as its main on-disk data structure. It is based on Copy-on-Write (CoW) principle which means it does copy only when a write is necessary. The following works will be implemented to bring off write features:

[GSoC 2017] Calendar Application

Blog post by AkshayAgarwal007 on Mon, 2017-05-08 06:51

Introduction

Hello I'm Akshay (IRC/Trac: akshay, GitHub: AkshayAgarwal007) from Kolkata, India. I would be working on developing a native Calendar Application for Haiku as a part of Google Summer of Code 2017. My mentors for the project are Scott McCreary and Kacper Kasper. I am very excited for this project.

Why a Calendar Application? Isn't there already one?

A Calendar application is a must have application for any operating system and would be beneficial for end users as well as developers. Haiku doesn't have a calendar application yet. There are a few existing 3rd party Calendar apps out there, but none are close to a simple and elegant Calendar app that an end user would like to use, with all the necessary features a modern Calendar app should have.

[GSoC 2017] Preferences GUI Refactoring Intro

Blog post by anirudhm on Sat, 2017-05-06 23:32

Hello World.

I’m Anirudh Murali (Trac: anirudh; IRC: anirudhm), from the southern region of India. I thank Haiku for selecting me as one of Google Summer of Code 2017 student. I’ll be working on the idea: “Preferences GUI Refactoring” this summer along with my mentors: waddlesplash and Sean Healy.

As of now, if one has to access any Preferences, a right click on the Deskbar, and accessing it with the submenu of Preferences, and still people who are new to Haiku end up selecting the wrong preferences option, atleast it happened for me. Even though Preference options are labelled, new users who aren’t familiar with the terminology take time to find the right option. What I intend to do for this summer is to revamp the access method of Preferences.

[GSoc 2017] Adding Harfbuzz support to Haiku

I am Deepanshu(Trac: digib0y IRC:digib0y), I am one of the seven students selected for GSoC this year from Haiku. I will be working to add Harfbuzz support this summer.

Quick intro:

I am an engineering student of Christ University, India. I am pursuing a degree in Bachelor of Technology in Computer Science and Engineering.

I have been a previous Google Code-In student where I worked with Haiku for the first time, I can recall the first time I ever connected to an IRC channel during GCI 2014; it was both my interest in the GCI task and my attraction to the positive, friendly environment on #haiku that convinced me to continue working with Haiku.

[GSoC 2017] 3D Hardware Acceleration in Haiku

Blog post by vivek on Fri, 2017-05-05 04:41

Hello everyone

My name is Vivek (Trac: vivek-roy, IRC: vivu). I have been selected for Google Summer of Code 2017 to work with Haiku on the project 3D Hardware Acceleration in Haiku.

The Mesa renderer in Haiku presently ventures into software rendering. Haiku uses software for rendering frame buffers and then writes them to the graphics hardware. The goal of my project is to port Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) Driver for i915, from the Linux kernel to Haiku with the help of DragonflyBSD’s Linux Compatibility layer, so that those drivers can be later extended to add OpenGL support (Mesa3D) for hardware accelerated 3D rendering.

Haiku monthly activity report - 04/2017

Blog post by PulkoMandy on Sun, 2017-04-30 20:26

Once again I am out of catchy taglines to introduce the monthly report. To apologize for that, I updated the statistics about Haiku git repository, and also added a similar statistics page for haikuports.

This report convers hrevs 51064 to 51139.

Network

A lot of activity on this side with no particular reason, with kallisti5 and waddlesplash working on the network preferences and underlying stack, towards support for VPNs and PPP connections.

Haiku monthly activity report - 03/2017

Blog post by PulkoMandy on Mon, 2017-04-03 20:26

The spring is comming, the GSoC applications closed just today, and it is time for a new monthly report!

This report covers hrevs 50989 to 51063

Drivers

tqh is working on improving wifi performance. He identified some sub-optimal code in the FreeBSD compatibility layer which he replaced by much simpler and faster functions that the compiler can actually inline. This improved performance of all IO access to network devices, fixing some real time problems.

Haiku monthly activity report - 02/2017

Blog post by PulkoMandy on Tue, 2017-02-28 20:26

Hello world!

Let’s see what happened in Haiku this month. This report covers hrevs 50928 to 50988.

waddlsplash worked on enabling real subpixel rendering in Haiku. This used to be protected by Microsoft patents, but they are all expired or will expire really soon. So, it is time to start experimenting with this and getting ready for enabling it.

waddlesplash also reworked the JSON API, and fixed several bugs found by the “JSON Minefield” tests. This makes our parser more compatible with all kinds of JSON data, and also easier to use.

Building packages with haikuporter

Blog post by humdinger on Wed, 2017-02-22 08:38

HaikuPorter is a python tool that takes a so-called recipe that describes the dependencies of a software and how to download, build and package it.

The HaikuPorts Wiki has all the info to get started writing recipes. But it gets into too much detail if all you want is use HaikuPorter to build stuff with existing working recipes.

Here’s a quick step-by-step guide how to do that.

Back from FOSDEM!

Blog post by mmu_man on Thu, 2017-02-09 03:21

Haiku & ReactOS booth with the full teamsSo, I just arrived from Brussels back home. One more FOSDEM done. As always it was action-packed, and I couldn’t clone myself enough times to see everything. The fact that we had the booth and that 3 out of the 4 talks I proposed were accepted probably didn’t help.

Luckily this time we were three to handle the half-booth, as both Olivier and Adrien made it with me, because yes, we shared the table with ReactOS this time, to increase the chances of being picked up.