RenkuOS - Nightly Build

Kevin

Hello! The nightly build can be found here:
https://github.com/RenkuOS/Source/releases/tag/nightly

Currently, only x86_64 is setup. I still need to get x86/RISC-V/ARM/etc setup as build jobs.

I brought in the latest Haiku changes, we can start merging in our changes now. Pull requests will require approval from a repo admin (currently me, RainyGirl, and Andrea) until we decide on a how exactly we want to handle that going forward.

Review, and have your LLMs, review the "current state" section of these guidelines on contributing:
https://github.com/RenkuOS/PlanAndGovernance/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md
and
https://github.com/RenkuOS/PlanAndGovernance/blob/main/REVIEW.md

Shaka444

Kevin Currently, only x86_64 is setup

I think we are all on X86_64 correct? We can save the resources and time by focusing on that for now..
Agree?

Shaka444

in hrev60072-54 it seems there is a bug in the usb_audio kernel driver. Disable it in the boot menu if you experience a KDL on boot.

Looking into it..

dcbeckman

Shaka444 Have you guys changed anything in USB audio? I can try to merge my Media-OS changes in the next few days.

Shaka444

dcbeckman Kevin is better to answer this, but as far as I know, this is just plain Haiku x64 to test the build system.

However, I did try installing your mediaos on it and I was unable to boot to my USB drive after I did.
Here is the KDL-

dcbeckman

Shaka444 That was on this nightly? With my packages likely being older than the nightly versions, you would probably end up with some sort of hybrid monstrosity where you are probably running an untested mix of stock nightly and my Media-OS modules. If that KDL was on stock beta 6, let me know and I can look into it further. I have never tried running Haiku on a USB drive, other than install images. I am hoping to have an installer for Haiku nightlies soon, and as soon as I can merge changes to Renku, the features will be in those nightlies automatically.

Shaka444

Ok so I figured out what was causing the KDL at boot with the RenkuOS .iso-
My Focusrite Scarlett 4i4 USB soundcard. When I unplugged it, Renku booted fine.

Shaka444

dcbeckman It was on a nightly. I knew the risk, but thought I'd give it a shot ;-)

Kevin

Right now the code base is nightly hrev60072, nothing else has been merged in yet.

Good to know that the Focusrite Scarlett 4i4 USB soundcard, sounds like a bug we could squash at some point.

dcbeckman

Kevin I have solved a lot of usb_audio and other usb issues with hotplugging, unplugging, and booting, so hopefully my changes already take care of it. I will pull in the sources now.

Kevin Right now the code base is nightly hrev60072

I was wondering where the cutoff was. Any idea of how often we want to review and add upstream changes? And is anyone interested in taking this on as a whole, or should we just address the changes as we run into them in our own projects? Still seems like someone should be in charge of it at the macro level to make sure no areas are ignored. We would then communicate with this person when we were already merging upstream changes into our own project, so that efforts aren't duplicated and so we don't end up with a 3-way merge.

Kevin

dcbeckman I was wondering where the cutoff was. Any idea of how often we want to review and add upstream changes? And is anyone interested in taking this on as a whole, or should we just address the changes as we run into them in our own projects?

That is a good question. We don't want to drift too far from the Haiku base, since .hkpg files can specify a minimum Haiku version and also there will most likely be bug fixes and/or features from upstream that would be helpful to have.

Ideally, a weekly or monthly merge of the latest Haiku commits would beneficial. The frequency probably depends on to the extend it can be automated, vs how much needs human eyes.

I think Claude (or another AI) could help. It shouldn't be hard to setup some automation to review all the Haiku commits, see which conflicts with RenkuOS files we have changed, create a PR for any non-conflicting changes, and flag any conflicts as needing review. When there is a conflict, then we would need to flag the person who is responsible for the change in our project to review.

I do think it would be good to have someone in charge of this, it could be a rotating position so no one gets stuck with it forever.

dcbeckman

I suggest that one of the first files someone edits is AGENTS.md. Still says we don't accept AI written code.

Kevin

dcbeckman Good point, I will update that next!

Shaka444

Another thing we need to tackle is updating software. It's not practical to reinstall via a nightly build. So where are we pointing the repos to? Will we only use our repo by default? Will SpritzManager be our update method?
If someone want to run a nightly build (like I do) then the packages built nightly need to be accessable to a repo.

And just to state again, to simplify and avoid conflicts we should install to /boot/home/config/packages by default (not system/packages) because this takes presidence at boot time. This also helps in troubleshooting because we can easily A/B compare with stock haiku packages.
(dcbeckman said we may find some packages need to be installed in /system/packages but we can address these as we find them. It may be an arbitrary setting thats not actually required in some cases..)

dcbeckman

Honestly having a good nightly update package would be a lot more beneficial than a nightly build, and it would also cut down on download usage over a nightly image. Users could download our most recent stable build, and update through a package system to get recent features.

I tried installing from a mounted image and had no USB input when I booted into the partition. I then installed from a thumb drive and I had USB fine, but no deskbar. This machine isn't a laptop so it shouldn't be the replicant bug that was patched recently from the Media-OS upstream notes. I actually have that as one of the first things to patch in RenkuOS. I am not having much luck with it atm.

dcbeckman

3rd reboot got in fine. but now the mouse is jerky. weird that I get a different behavior everytime

Kevin

We will need to get a repo setup, that should probably be next on the to-do list. I haven't looked much at it yet, but I think we could host it on GitHub too for now, until we get the RenkuOS domain/website up and running.

clasqm

If you do set it up on github, please document the procedure. I've been considering that myself.

dcbeckman

So first thing I did in the RenkuOS build was check HaikutDepot for updates, and sure enough Haiku system updates are ready to overwrite anything we might have created. If we want nightly updates to be packageable, we need to remove the main system repo (beta6 or nightly) of the install, and replace it with our own repo. HaikutDepot and HaikuPorts repos can remain connected. While /boot/home/config/packages does take precedence at boot time, pkgman takes precedence from the mtime of when it was last touched, so Haiku nightly repos would take precedence over our own and pkgman would install the stock Haiku module over ours.

That said, system/packages is our own, and once we deem a module is stable we should freely move the item to system/packages. I don't think keeping the system/packages stock does most people any favors. I am more likely to A/B in two pure environments/partitions where I don't have to worry about other modules influencing my results. Or if it is really an A/B of just one module, I will use nonpackaged and a blocklist to test.