4 ms·

Haiku Depot Server Technology Modernisation

64 points by warrenm 4y ago

krylon 4y ago
TL;DR - it's written in Java, and they are migrating their codebase from Java 11 to Java 17 as well as updating some dependencies while they are working on it. Nothing glamorous, but necessary to keep their infrastructure up and running.
- user3939382 4y ago
  It's awesome that they have team members willing to tackle the unglamorous hard stuff. Long-term that's where the quality comes from.
komadori 4y ago
An article on haiku-os.org which begins "Java technology has been moving forward much faster in recent years...". I honestly thought it must be the start of a belated April fools joke!
- skrebbel 4y ago
  Why? Java the language used to develop super slowly but the last few years it got a lot of improvements quickly.
  - komadori 4y ago
    The joke is that reading about Java on the Haiku website felt a bit incongruous, so I was expecting a parody. Here is my stab at one: Java technology has been moving forward much faster in recent years, and we feel that the time has come to start migrating Haiku OS away from its legacy C++ roots and onto the JVM. We are excited to announce a new design for Haiku which reimagines the old "Kit" APIs we inherited from BeOS as forward looking JavaBean-based frameworks with full support for configuration via XML. We know that this will be a big change for application developers, and so we're also announcing a new Java bytecode back-end for GCC 2.95. This will help to bring legacy C++ code bases across into the new world of JHaiku with minimal porting effort. Developers simply need to eliminate a few obsolete features from their code such as structs and unsigned integers, and our special version of G++ will seamlessly generate the necessary tens of thousands of class files.
sreejithr 4y ago
Who here uses Haiku OS? I'm genuinely curious. In today's age where everything is web-based, I don't see how OSs are relevant anymore.
- mouse_ 4y ago
  > Everything is web-based Disagree > I don't see how OSs are relevant anymore. Even if I were to accept your precedent that everything is web-based (it's totally not, though Google, Microsoft and Apple may want things to be that way, it's completely disconnected from reality), that would only mean that OS competition is more important than ever. We need to trim away the fat of legacy glut such as AI assistants, built in security suites (that largely haven't done much in practice to keep people from becoming continually infected or digitally attacked), constant security and usability patches to old APIs the companies behind them are actively trying to kill (win32 for example), support for shoddy-at-best proprietary OEM drivers, both keeping them functional (something Windows and macOS has largely failed at) and secure, etc. If everything really is web-based, then it's more important than ever to trim the 20+gb of attack surface away from the majority of people's software ecosystems. My viewpoint is that Haiku is the most minimal and functional graphical desktop system that boots and runs on my modern Ryzen 5000 hardware, and I just really like the way it does things. It feels to me like a stepping stone into -a- future of functional, useful, production oriented desktop software. Also, I will go as far as to say the top-down, tight knit developer community is able to make leaps and bounds in experience in a way the Free Desktop/Linux ecosystem could only dream of. They envisioned, drafted, and shipped high DPI support in just one update (the recent Beta 4), something certain popular Linux desktops are still to this day struggling to get right. Fonts always look crisp and perfect, something Gnome still can't seem to manage; mouse input feels "correct" somehow, something I've never encountered on Linux, only on Macs and Windows machines.
  - E39M5S62 4y ago
    I run Haiku on an i5-8500 with a 4k 27" screen. It's ... Wow. I prefer using that machine over my Threadripper Pro Linux workstation. Haiku is the desktop we all should have had these past years.

64 points by warrenm 4y ago

TL;DR - it's written in Java, and they are migrating their codebase from Java 11 to Java 17 as well as updating some dependencies while they are working on it. Nothing glamorous, but necessary to keep their infrastructure up and running.

user3939382 4y ago
It's awesome that they have team members willing to tackle the unglamorous hard stuff. Long-term that's where the quality comes from.

komadori 4y ago

An article on haiku-os.org which begins "Java technology has been moving forward much faster in recent years...". I honestly thought it must be the start of a belated April fools joke!

skrebbel 4y ago
Why? Java the language used to develop super slowly but the last few years it got a lot of improvements quickly.
- komadori 4y ago
  The joke is that reading about Java on the Haiku website felt a bit incongruous, so I was expecting a parody. Here is my stab at one: Java technology has been moving forward much faster in recent years, and we feel that the time has come to start migrating Haiku OS away from its legacy C++ roots and onto the JVM. We are excited to announce a new design for Haiku which reimagines the old "Kit" APIs we inherited from BeOS as forward looking JavaBean-based frameworks with full support for configuration via XML. We know that this will be a big change for application developers, and so we're also announcing a new Java bytecode back-end for GCC 2.95. This will help to bring legacy C++ code bases across into the new world of JHaiku with minimal porting effort. Developers simply need to eliminate a few obsolete features from their code such as structs and unsigned integers, and our special version of G++ will seamlessly generate the necessary tens of thousands of class files.

sreejithr 4y ago

Who here uses Haiku OS? I'm genuinely curious. In today's age where everything is web-based, I don't see how OSs are relevant anymore.

mouse_ 4y ago
> Everything is web-based Disagree > I don't see how OSs are relevant anymore. Even if I were to accept your precedent that everything is web-based (it's totally not, though Google, Microsoft and Apple may want things to be that way, it's completely disconnected from reality), that would only mean that OS competition is more important than ever. We need to trim away the fat of legacy glut such as AI assistants, built in security suites (that largely haven't done much in practice to keep people from becoming continually infected or digitally attacked), constant security and usability patches to old APIs the companies behind them are actively trying to kill (win32 for example), support for shoddy-at-best proprietary OEM drivers, both keeping them functional (something Windows and macOS has largely failed at) and secure, etc. If everything really is web-based, then it's more important than ever to trim the 20+gb of attack surface away from the majority of people's software ecosystems. My viewpoint is that Haiku is the most minimal and functional graphical desktop system that boots and runs on my modern Ryzen 5000 hardware, and I just really like the way it does things. It feels to me like a stepping stone into -a- future of functional, useful, production oriented desktop software. Also, I will go as far as to say the top-down, tight knit developer community is able to make leaps and bounds in experience in a way the Free Desktop/Linux ecosystem could only dream of. They envisioned, drafted, and shipped high DPI support in just one update (the recent Beta 4), something certain popular Linux desktops are still to this day struggling to get right. Fonts always look crisp and perfect, something Gnome still can't seem to manage; mouse input feels "correct" somehow, something I've never encountered on Linux, only on Macs and Windows machines.
- E39M5S62 4y ago
  I run Haiku on an i5-8500 with a 4k 27" screen. It's ... Wow. I prefer using that machine over my Threadripper Pro Linux workstation. Haiku is the desktop we all should have had these past years.