The Haiku alpha release has always been a bit elusive. The project has been near the alpha release for a while now, but a number of difficult data-destructive bugs kept it at bay. After an informal coding sprint, the alpha is now just a decision away.

Several key Haiku developers came together last week for an unofficial coding sprint. During this sprint, they made major headway in a vast array of aspects of the Haiku operating system, such as improving the HID driver, file system problems, and many other things.

They also discussed the almost mythical first alpha release of the project, and concluded that nothing is really stopping this release from materialising. This is what they had to say about it:

We have talked about it a lot and I am happy to report that we don’t consider any remaining issue serious enough to hold it back any longer. We just don’t know what to do with the IDE versus ATA stack. On the one hand, the ATA stack doesn’t have some problems of the older IDE stack, but Michael himself said that the new ATA stack is actually slower. And then it has some new problems of its own. Tough call, but as soon as we have made up our mind, I think we are good to go! Exciting times!

This means that the alpha release is now tantalizingly close. These are indeed exciting times for the Haiku project, which has been underway for a very long time now, never doing any form of an official release. The project is quite careful with giving users the wrong impression, and they don’t want to give people the wrong idea about the project’s current state.

As soon as an alpha release has indeed made its way onto the web, I can guarantee you I’ll be doing a little celebration dance. Here’s to hoping they get the IDE vs. ATA issue worked out quickly!