Things I've Done For AROS

• Worked on Zune:
  • Implemented support for easy creating of external MCC classes (for Zune). This involved extending the 'genmodule' tool to scan the source files for methods and generating code for the dispatcher and library intialization, and adding support in the build system. This makes it very easy to create MCC's.
  • Made it possible to compile many core classes as external .mui files, which makes it possible to avoid including non-critical ones if space is tight (like on the demo floppy). This also saves some memory, since classes won't be loaded into memory unless they are actually used. Implementing this required adapting the the Zune sources and makefiles, and also tweaking the MCC/MUI support in the genmodule tool which wasn't flexible enough.
  • Implemented alphablended ghosting of disabled buttons, which looks much better than the old grid pattern. The latter is still used if the screenmode isn't hi-/true-color or memory is tight.
  • Implemented "outline" style for frame titles.
  • Various minor cleanups and bugfixes.
• Implemented PrefsWindow, SystemPrefsWindow and PrefsEditor external Zune classes which implements the appearance and operations common to all preferences programs.
• Rewrote Font Prefs to use Zune and the PrefsWindow and related classes for consistent look and code reuse.
• Implementing the AboutWindow external Zune class which implements a common nice-looking "about dialog" usable by all AROS programs.
• Extracted the Clock and Calendar classes from Time Prefs and made them public external MCC's, to allow for more code reuse.
• Rewrote Utilities/Clock to use Zune and Clock.mcc. It's now basically just a thin wrapper around Clock.mcc, instead of doing all the drawing on it's own.
• Implemented a new About dialog for AROS which uses the the new logotype and shows more information, like authors and sponsors.
• Various cleanups to the build system:
  • Simplified the way language catalogs are built by implementing a %build_catalogs macro in the build system.
  • Removed the usage of so called "source archives" in the tree. Several libraries were using this feature, which is no longer considered very useful and complicated the build system for no good reason.
  • Fixed the configure script to complain about missing tools that are required instead of having the build break in subtle ways a lot later.
• Implemented a system/policy for allocating method and attribute identifiers in Zune (they have to be unique). Up until now the selection of identifiers has been basically random.
• Implemented a simple HD installation program for AROS/i386-pc, which included implementing the "Partition" and "Format" commands, and updating/fixing the bootloader installation/setup program "install-i386-pc".
• Implemented benchmarks of various things (BOOPSI method call and object creation overhead, exec.library memory allocation routines), which led to some investigation in possible optimizations.
• Implemented several BOOPSI functions as macros to increase performance and make them usable from ROMmable libraries. This increased the performance method invocation by about 21% (benchmarked) and probably similar increases in the other cases (not benchmarked yet).
• Worked on backporting/merging the MorphOS intuition.library sources back into AROS (the MorphOS Team grabbed our intuition.library sources for MorphOS and have done many improvements since then).
• Worked on documentation:
  • Implemented the new documentation system and website, which included rewriting, restructuring, updating and reviewing a large amount of documentation.
  • Updated the guide on how to compile AROS so it actually contains correct instructions, compared to earlier.
  • Worked on the roadmap/requirements for AROS 1.0.
• Worked on Wanderer (file manager, workbench.library and icon.library):
  • Implemented support for starting programs "the workbench way", and finished up OpenWorkbenchObjectA(). Also added support for opening directories with it.
  • Implemented a small Open CLI utility, which you can use to open objects just like they would have been doubleclicked on in Wanderer. For example, running "Open S:" will open the S directory in a new Wanderer window. Running "Open S:Startup-Sequence" will most likely load Startup-Sequence into MultiView (depends on what default tool the icon has).
  • Reworked the functions which handle loading of icons in icon.library, so that they are more compatible with the AmigaOS 3.5 API. They should implement most of the semantics correctly now. Also implemented a file identification function, which is used for finding the apropriate def_#? icon for files without any icon. It uses datatypes.library, and is very flexible. Basically, we have the equivalent of "DefIcons" functionality in AROS now, but nicely integrated into the OS.
  • Reimplemented the execute command dialog as an external program and improved it a bit. It now looks better, is properly localized and remembers the last command executed. This also required some fixes in workbench.library (for getting the default search path), which in turn required some fixes in dos.library.
  • Added simple support for deleting files. Since all tools are implemented as external programs, I had to add an API to workbench.library for notifying the file manager when directories/files have changed (temporary until we have proper notification support in dos.library).
  • Implemented drawing of icon labels using outline mode, to make them better visible also on dark backgrounds. Changed the default font to be bold, since it looks better. Also implemented drawing selected icons with a "brightening" effect, so that you can actually see what icons you have selected. :-)
  • Many various changes/fixed/implementations in workbench.library and icon.library that I don't recall in detail now. :-) Most of the work I have done on Wanderer has been "under the hood", and not visible to users.
• Imported the high quality truetype Bitstream Vera font family and setup the build to include them by default.
• Hacked a bit on the TCC (Tiny C Compiler) port, so that it can produce AROS executables itself. I've successfully used it to compile a small program (which opens a window) under AROS with it!
• Worked a bit on the clib, adding some stub functions, and did quick ports of many GNU tools: diffutils, patch, grep, m4. Also ported GNU make, based on the old non-ixemul AmigaOS port (which needed updating a lot), although I haven't actually finished yet (it crashes badly).
• Various build fixes and source cleanups all over the tree. Also, fixed a LOT of compiler warnings. There were so many of them during a normal build of AROS that you tend to ignore them, which is bad since they might actually help you discover bugs. It's much better now, although there is still some work to be done in this area.
• Implemented a custom package format that uses bzip2 compression to squeeze as much as possible onto the AROS/i386-pc boot/demo floppy.
• Made AROS/i386-pc bootable from CDROM (basically made the CDROM filesystem handler ROMable and fixed the DOS booting procedure).
• Organized the last couple of stable snapshots of AROS, as well as setting up the new nightly builds (writing build scripts, setting up mirroring routines, ...).
• Spearheaded a copyright and licensing overview (together with a written licensing policy) to clean up the repository.
• Ported some programming languages and miscellaneous programs to AROS:
  • Python
  • LUA
  • VIM
• Helped with improving the BGUI port.
• Implemented C:Join.
• Administration of the logotype contest: creating the gallery/voting page, writing the news items, processing the contributions and similar.
• Miscellanous bug fixes, updates and changes all over the system and other things I don't remember anymore...