[GSoC 2017] Preferences GUI Refactoring - Final Report

Hello World.

This is Anirudh. Here’s my final overall report of my work during Google Summer of Code 2017. My sincere thanks to waddlesplash and Sean Healy, for their excellent mentorship. They immediately responded, and assisted me whenever I needed help. I’m grateful to the Haiku team, community members and my fellow GSoC colleagues for their help, constructive criticism, reporting bugs and helping the project shape better.

Link to the source code/repo: https://github.com/HaikuArchives/SuperPrefs

List of all blog posts: https://www.haiku-os.org/blog/anirudhm

List of all commits: https://github.com/AnirudhMurali/SuperPrefs/commits/master

Project demo:

Achieved so far

Control Panel Interface

Categorization of Preflets

Inclusive of both System Prefs and Custom User Prefs

Localized Preflets’ Name Search

Related Keywords Search

Apps View [Needs improvement]

What’s left to do

Localization for Related Keywords and additional keywords

Option to enable Apps View only if needed

Option to set Custom Categories

Making individual preferences better [Ironically the original goal]

Contribute to Haiku in one way or other

Things learnt

Technically

How to code and how not to code

Better Object Oriented Software Engineering approaches

Exposure to how open-source organizations work

Of course, Git, C++, Standard Template Library, Haiku API

Non Technically

Consistency > Pace

Late nights cause Burnout

Multi tasking Academic work and GSoC

Effective Communication through IRC, Mailing lists

Documentation

If you’re a student and reading this for future GSoC programs, I’d highly recommend you to submit a proposal for Haiku. So, it’s been an amazing summer, thanks again Haiku and the Google Summer of Code team.

Anirudh | LinkedIn