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Operating System Specific Discussions => Amiga OS => Amiga OS -- Development => Topic started by: AmigaOldskooler on October 30, 2015, 05:59:16 PM

Title: AmigaOS 4: Timberwolf Goes Open Source
Post by: AmigaOldskooler on October 30, 2015, 05:59:16 PM
The Frieden-brothers have  decided to make the Amiga Firefox port called Timberwolf open source! A  very good move, I must say.

http://oldschoolgameblog.com/2015/10/30/amigaos-4-timberwolf-goes-open-source/
Title: Re: AmigaOS 4: Timberwolf Goes Open Source
Post by: Iggy on October 30, 2015, 06:18:15 PM
Quote from: AmigaOldskooler;798468
The Frieden-brothers have  decided to make the Amiga Firefox port called Timberwolf open source! A  very good move, I must say.

http://oldschoolgameblog.com/2015/10/30/amigaos-4-timberwolf-goes-open-source/


So...does anyone want to source code to a dated port of Firefox (without any documentation)?

I think I heard some crickets.
Title: Re: AmigaOS 4: Timberwolf Goes Open Source
Post by: billt on October 30, 2015, 07:17:16 PM
Quote from: Iggy;798470
So...does anyone want to source code to a dated port of Firefox (without any documentation)?


You don't think that us non-Friedens can/will learn something about how to fit more recent Mozilla code into OS4 by viewing this code and comparing with Mozilla baseline from that time period? As Thomas mentioned in his post, build documentation is forthcoming as well.
Title: Re: AmigaOS 4: Timberwolf Goes Open Source
Post by: Iggy on October 30, 2015, 07:40:34 PM
Quote from: billt;798475
You don't think that us non-Friedens can/will learn something about how to fit more recent Mozilla code into OS4 by viewing this code and comparing with Mozilla baseline from that time period? As Thomas mentioned in his post, build documentation is forthcoming as well.

That is a heck of a task you are proposing without the documentation to tell you what the Brothers did to the original source code.
But we might as well be optimistic.

Good luck to anyone that wants to try it.

BTW - Even a MorphOS user can admit to you that the Friedens are fairly competent, and they have lost interest in it.
Title: Re: AmigaOS 4: Timberwolf Goes Open Source
Post by: Gulliver on October 30, 2015, 08:12:10 PM
Not only a pretty outdated port, but one that was pretty unstable.

It took how many years for them to make it open source, I cannot imagine how many more years it will take for them to free its documentation.

I dare to say it is useless at best.
Title: Re: AmigaOS 4: Timberwolf Goes Open Source
Post by: Fats on October 31, 2015, 01:16:44 PM
Quote from: Iggy;798477
That is a heck of a task you are proposing without the documentation to tell you what the Brothers did to the original source code.
But we might as well be optimistic.


In this day and age with source code version management systems like git this should not be such an humongous task as you like to present it.
Title: Re: AmigaOS 4: Timberwolf Goes Open Source
Post by: Yasu on October 31, 2015, 02:31:43 PM
But why now and why did they wait so long?
Title: Re: AmigaOS 4: Timberwolf Goes Open Source
Post by: buzz on October 31, 2015, 06:14:06 PM
Quote from: Fats;798517
In this day and age with source code version management systems like git this should not be such an humongous task as you like to present it.

Considering there is zero source history included here, neither for firefox, nor the amigaos changes, how does git help with the documentation for the code that has already been done ? :)
Title: Re: AmigaOS 4: Timberwolf Goes Open Source
Post by: slaapliedje on October 31, 2015, 07:25:40 PM
Why wasn't it open source to begin with?  At last then if they had lost interest in it, it could have been worked on by others all this time.  Not to mention, doesn't the MPL require that?  I'm not sure, since I haven't really dealt a lot with it.

What would be nice is if it could be 'leanified' enough to run on a 68k machine, but I suppose we have netsurf for that.  Firefox is a bit on the fat side for it.

slaapliedje
Title: Re: AmigaOS 4: Timberwolf Goes Open Source
Post by: Iggy on November 01, 2015, 02:18:51 AM
Quote from: Fats;798517
In this day and age with source code version management systems like git this should not be such an humongous task as you like to present it.



You would know better than me Staf.
I was offered the source code to a well known Amiga program over a year ago.
Even with an Apple port handy, it looked like a mess to figure out.
Title: Re: AmigaOS 4: Timberwolf Goes Open Source
Post by: Fats on November 01, 2015, 03:47:06 PM
Quote from: buzz;798532
Considering there is zero source history included here, neither for firefox, nor the amigaos changes, how does git help with the documentation for the code that has already been done ? :)


I assume the original code where they started from is available and then the final released code. You can import both in git with the second over the first and you then can easily see the OS4 changes. For a programmer worth it's name and familiar with the Amiga(OS) API that should already tell a lot even without documentation. You should even be able to do this in subversion but git will allow you to split up the big patch in smaller patches much easier. The latter does need quite deep knowledge of git features as history rewriting etc. though.
Title: Re: AmigaOS 4: Timberwolf Goes Open Source
Post by: Iggy on November 01, 2015, 06:54:44 PM
Thanks Staf,
I know know why so many use that.
I'll add it to my list of tools.
Title: Re: AmigaOS 4: Timberwolf Goes Open Source
Post by: buzz on November 01, 2015, 07:42:46 PM
Quote from: Fats;798576
I assume the original code where they started from is available and then the final released code. You can import both in git with the second over the first and you then can easily see the OS4 changes. For a programmer worth it's name and familiar with the Amiga(OS) API that should already tell a lot even without documentation. You should even be able to do this in subversion but git will allow you to split up the big patch in smaller patches much easier. The latter does need quite deep knowledge of git features as history rewriting etc. though.

Well you need to find the extract revision their code is based from (perhaps there is some information in the repository to point to this), you could then reconstruct at least the firefox history part, and then apply the amigaos changes on top. But my basic point was that it looks as though they didn't go our their way to make this easy - I'm sure they used source control themselves (who would work on such a big source without it ?), so where is it. It would be very useful to see the changelog of the AmigaOS parts.

Thanks for the git lesson ;-)