“Why BFS needs chkbfs”
Stephen B. - November 3rd, 2007

Recently a post made on the Haiku blog called “Why BFS needs chkbfs.” Written by Axel Dörfler, the article has some information on how BFS operates and the problem that the chkbfs tool fixes:

The reason you need this tool is a feature of the VFS and a design problem in BFS: if you delete a file which is still in use by another application, the file’s disk space won’t be freed until the last user closed its reference to it – until then, only the inode is marked as deleted, and removed from the parent directory, so that it can’t be found or opened again anymore.

It’s an informative read, especially if you have an interest in filesystems in general or BFS in particular.

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New Site: BePorts
Stephen B. - October 29th, 2007

Brecht Machiels wrote back in August to let us know about a new site he’s started called “BePorts.” From Brecht’s EMail:

BePorts aims to become a centralized collection of software ported to the BeOS platform. A ‘BePort’ basically consists of the BeOS-specific patches to the original source code. Along with a Subversion repository to store all patches, a Trac site eases cooperation on porting efforts. A wiki stores detailed information about each port. There is also a mailing list.

Since launching, an interesting application called “BePorter” has been released on the site. It’s a python script designed to help simplify the process of compiling ported applications on BeOS – which it does by automatically applying BeOS-specific patches and building the application. While many common UNIX command-line tools will compile “out-of-the-box” on BeOS, it does often require a bit of fiddling with ./configure options and changes to makefiles. This looks like a great way to make the process largely-painless.

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BeZilla Goes Forward, Into the Past!
Stephen B. - October 29th, 2007

Developer “tigerdog” has posted information about some plans for BeZilla development in the near future – in the form of a Firesign Theatre reference. As we posted earlier, new dependencies added to Firefox in the past year (Cairo, etc) have made it impossible to build the current development code under BeOS.

So tigerdog has decided to revisit some earlier “bleeding-edge” patches written in the days when the Firefox trunk would still compile in BeOS – since many of those patches were never committed or accepted to the trunk. From the BeZilla blog:

I will include tqh’s “lightweight” NSPR, streamlining of nsAppShell, mouse movement improvements and pretty much all of the enhancements that were backported and arrived in 2.0.0.8. When I create something useable, I’ll post to BeBits on the Bleeding Edge page.

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Haiku gets Productive
Stephen B. - October 29th, 2007

There has been yet-another interesting milestone in Haiku’s development this past week: Haikuware admin “karlvd” has reported success running Gobe Productive in recent Haiku builds (also reported by OSNews). From the post:

I’ve played with GoBE Productive for half an hour now, and it seems remarkedly stable. Gobe Productive is a unique piece of software, and one of the darlings of BeOS software. This will surely fill a much needed gap in the office suite department, despite the software’s age! It’s also testament to the vision of enabling backwards compatibility to BeOS application, and how good Haiku is at it.

A minior bugfix was reportedly necessary to get Productive running – and, as a side-effect, another venerable BeOS app now works in Haiku: the FTP client NetPenguin.

The demo of Productive has also been added to Karl’s “Weekly Super Pack” – a regularly-updated VMware image containing the latest Haiku build and a selection of compatible apps.

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Reindexing Files
Stephen B. - October 25th, 2007

Ever attempt to solve a problem – only to realize that you had already solved it several years earlier? While getting my BeOS machine back up and running recently, I ran into that situation. I figured that it was a good time to upgrade the hard drive while I was working on it anyway, and ended up having to reindex some files on the new drive – but I couldn’t remember the proper syntax for the “reindex” app. Fortunately, a few minutes of searching Usenet via Google Groups revealed that some helpful fellow had already posted the answer to comp.sys.be.help back in 2002. And to my amusement, it turns out I had made the post.

For anyone who might find the info useful, here are three examples for reindexing BeMail, Person, and MP3 files (respectively):

reindex -r -v "MAIL:*" mail/
reindex -r -v "META:*" people/
reindex -r -v "AUDIO:*" mp3/

While there’s always the more manual method of duplicating / copying the files and deleting the originals, the reindex app is a bit simpler if you have a large number of files to deal with.

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BeZilla – “I have some good news, and…”
Stephen B. - October 25th, 2007

Oscar Lesta recently wrote in to let us know about an interesting – if disheartening – discussion that took place this summer on the BeZilla LiveJournal site. To quote BeZilla developer “tigerdog”:

The 2.0 chain is the end of the road for Firefox development for BeOS. The continuing addition of dependencies (there are LOTS now) continually increases the level of effort necessary to keep Firefox building. Combine this with the fact that more and more devs are focused on getting Haiku running and released and it leaves us too many demands and not enough resources.

If I had a say, we’d still fix a few niggling problems (like windows not repainting until resized) and in a perfect world, we’d unravel the SSL-induced hang and establish some limited printing support. Throw those changes into the 2.0 branch and move on to a webkit-based browser for Haiku.

He also recommends keeping a close eye on Ryan Leavengood’s efforts to port WebKit to Haiku. While it is unfortunate to read that the BeZilla project is apparently approaching some potentially-insurmountable obstacles, the BeZilla devs still deserve plenty of praise for all the progress they’ve made so far – and it’s great to see that they’re still dedicated to improving the BeOS releases based on the current codebase (as the recent Firefox update shows).

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“There’s Haiku Logos Everywhere, Man!”
Stephen B. - October 25th, 2007

No, we haven’t been smokin’ the BeDoper – it’s just that lovely time of year up here in Canada when you can’t step outside without seeing a Haiku logo in every direction.

That is some truly-brilliant guerilla-marketing: a logo that literally grows on trees! That also has to be worth some “green computing” brownie-points too.

 

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