[ASLO] ASLO build and deployment process (Jatin Dhankhar)

[Jatin Dhankhar]

Hi Tony,

Based on our suggestions I updated the proposal, thanks a lot for your
inputs.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wECi_gtxyar3MWbC8ly6bjdW8SSLYe5YNcXPiTUUlkg/edit?usp=sharing

 the new version assume the master source repository is github and that
> bundles are installed and updated via setup.py from github
>             (the build and deployment methodologies). This means the new
> system does not need to implement the Developer Hub.

That seems a nice idea but won't there be need for moderation/approval of
activities.

Add recommendation engine - I think this is a distraction. How can a
> program know the interests and needs of a user to provide a useful
> recommendation? I also think the Review system is a distraction. The
> problem is that no reviews come from actual users of the activities but are
> similar to the sponsored reviews at Amazon. A better approach would be to
> strengthen the tags/collections/category system.

This can be useful if we want to show user, programs similar to what user
already installed or suggestions based on what users installed along with
following app but that is quite a work, we need to add analytics and stuff.
Tags/collections/category is a simple way to achieve this nicely.

Improve look/theme of ASLO - Naturally, this should be done in the context
> of the project.

Yes, I am looking at http://beautifulopen.com, for awesome examples.  I am
liking these so far http://rouge.jneen.net/ and
http://www.gnu.org/software/guile/.

I want to get started with discussion of potential design and tools for
deploying activities.

Thanks,
Jatin Dhankhar

On Sun, Apr 2, 2017 at 9:58 AM, Tony Anderson <tony_anderson at usa.net> wrote:

> Hi, Jatin
>
> The most important thing to keep in mind is that ASLO manages a library of
> independent programs (Sugar activities). These are updated asynchronously
> from the Sugar releases. Sugar is in desperate need of build management -
> as best I can tell at the moment we have none. However, this problem does
> not directly apply to the activities.
>
> The 'build' process for the activities is accomplished by 'python setup.py
> dist_xo' executed in the bundle root. The generated xo file is then
> 'deployed' to the appropriate directory in download.sugarlabs.org as the
> latest version.
>
>
> Since development time in GSOC is limited, it is critical to define a
> doable project. In my experience proposals set unachievable expectations
> and result in partially complete and disappointing results.
>
> Improve look/theme of ASLO - Naturally, this should be done in the
> context of the project.
>
> Maintain ASLO - I am proposing that this project build a replacement for
> ASLO which can be used immediately offline by school servers. During the
> GSOC period, the community should be expected to judge whether the
> development forms a base for future replacement of ASLO.
>
> Add recommendation engine - I think this is a distraction. How can a
> program know the interests and needs of a user to provide a useful
> recommendation? I also think the Review system is a distraction. The
> problem is that no reviews come from actual users of the activities but are
> similar to the sponsored reviews at Amazon. A better approach would be to
> strengthen the tags/collections/category system.
>
> Improve Transactional emails - I think this is also a distraction. The
> user communication is clicks on links. The response is public.
> So I would propose something like:
>
>         - develop a new ASLO as activities3.sugarlabs.org based on Django
> (to this end I can supply my current minimal working version).
>
>         - the new version assume the master source repository is github
> and that bundles are installed and updated via setup.py from github
>             (the build and deployment methodologies). This means the new
> system does not need to implement the Developer Hub.
>
>         - the core activities (Journal, Record, Log, Terminal, Write,
> Jukebox, Image Viewer, Browse, and Read) be excluded from ASLO and handled
> through the                 Sugar release cycle). These activities are
> installed in a Sugar release and the ability to erase them is disabled.
>
>         - for simplicity, the initial version could be limited to two
> templates: an index page showing icons and names of activities and a page
> per activity with the download button.
>
>         - There should be a simple and transparent 'CRUD' capability for
> the metadata - perhaps in the first commit based on Django's admin feature.
> I think the first commit db could consist of a single table: one row per
> activity.
>
>         - Do whatever can be done to improve the attractiveness of the
> site.
>
>         - Do not base development on emulation of any other project:
> Mozilla add-ons or Play Store or .... Certainly the project can and should
> be take inspiration                 from any source. However, it will be
> enough to attempt to provide the essential current functionality of ASLO.
>
> What I visualize is the project be installed on github at the point of a
> first working commit. The project could then be installed as
> activities3.sugarlabs.org for community testing and advice. Development
> would be using git locally using localhost or a local server. Commits would
> be pushed to GitHub at appropriate points in the development and the
> resulting version would then be used to update the online version. The
> project would work with the current download.sugarlabs.org as the source
> of bundles. (therefore, keeping the addition of activities to GitHub as a
> separate project).
>
> Keep in mind, I am speaking for myself. While, if your project were
> selected, I would probably be a mentor - this gives me no special voice in
> the selection. Normally we have several proposals for each available slot
> and many worthy proposals are not selected.
>
> Tony
>
>
> On 04/01/2017 09:29 PM, Jatin Dhankhar wrote:
>
> Hi Tony,
>
> I think the same, as per commit history project didn't get much attention
> recently.
>
> The website itself is implemented in PhP and is patterned after the
>> Mozilla addons site.
>
>
> Yes, the README mentions it's based upon Remora(http://wiki.mozilla.
> org/Update:Remora ) which old and deprecated now in favor of AMO (
> <https://wiki.mozilla.org/AMO:Developers>https://wiki.mozilla.org/AMO:
> Developers) .
>
> At the moment I am trying to find out which of the activities actually
>> work in the current release of Sugar. The library currently has about 600
>> activities. A Sugar activity is intended to be self-contained (any
>> dependencies not satisfied by Sugar are to be incorporated in the bundle).
>
>
> I think it's a moonshot but I am thinking to include a testing suite to
> determine whether a current version builds against a certain sugar version
> by using a CI or something like  OpenSuse's QA (http://open.qa/) for more
> comprehensive suite.
>
> How this will be done is a mystery to me. Logically, each of the versions
>> of an activity should be commited in git so that a developer (or
>> maintainer) can the changes made over time.
>
> Yes, that seems right thing to do, last year Arch Linux shifted all their
> AUR packages to a git backend, maybe they can help, I can try finding
> persons who carried out the transition.
>
> If you look at the ASLO site, it seems clear that the page needs to
>> specify more than which versions of Sugar are supported. It will need to
>> specify which models of the XO are supported. It will also need to mention
>> any restrictions on architecture or peripherals needed for the users system
>> (microphone, camera, network connection - wired or wireless, and so on).
>
>
> Yes more like a Manifest, similar to what Play Stores does for Android.
>
>  My plan is to use Django (which enables code to be in Python and not
>> PhP). The school server already provides sqllite, mariadb, and postgresql
>> so db support is readily available. Django is designed to support fusion -
>> creating web pages dynamically based on information from a db and so should
>> match the requirement.
>
> Yes, re-write seems a reasonable choice. One thing that I am curious is
> that current repo suggests that it's is a mix of Python and PHP and going
> full python would be a great move, in my opinion.
>
>
>> Just for further background. Many deployments I work with have no access
>> to the internet. To provide an alternative, I support a school server which
>> XO users can access by wifi in the classroom
>
> I think point makes a strong case for easily replicable instances of ASLO
> with little to no configuration on the user side, which means we need to
> make a simple and consistent build process so that users can run their own
> versions of  ASLO easily. Docker is a option worth looking into.
>
> I hope you will consider this challenging and not discouraging.
>
> Yes, I find it equally challenging and interesting.
>
> I made a proposal ASLO that shares some of the concerns that you discussed
> . Kindly take a look and let me know what do you think of it. Here is the
> proposal link
> <https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wECi_gtxyar3MWbC8ly6bjdW8SSLYe5YNcXPiTUUlkg/edit?usp=sharing>
> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wECi_gtxyar3MWbC8ly6bjdW8SSLYe5YNcX
> PiTUUlkg/edit?usp=sharing
>
>
> Thanks,
> Jatin Dhankhar
>
> On Sat, Apr 1, 2017 at 3:20 PM, Tony Anderson <tony_anderson at usa.net>
> wrote:
>
>> Hi, Jatin
>>
>> The ASLO site is in desparate need of work. At the moment I am trying to
>> find out which of the activities actually work in the current release of
>> Sugar. The library currently has about 600 activities. A Sugar activity is
>> intended to be self-contained (any dependencies not satisfied by Sugar are
>> to be incorporated in the bundle). Naturally, an activity should work on
>> any Sugar. However, this situation is becoming very complicated. First, two
>> of the XO models (1 and 1.5) have Intel 32 bit architecture processors. The
>> others (1.75 and 4) have Arm processors. Some of the activities incorporate
>> binary modules which limit their use. The Sugar community wishes to support
>> Sugar on a range of platforms. For mobile devices, Lionel Laske is
>> developing Sugarizer. While traditional activities were implemented in
>> Python (with some binary exceptions using Java or C), Sugarizer activities
>> are written in Javascript (HTML5 and CSS). Naturally a trend in modern
>> computers is to 64 bit architecture (AMD 64).
>>
>> The website itself is implemented in PhP and is patterned after the
>> Mozilla addons site. It has a repository of activity bundles (.xo files)
>> which is visible at <http://download.sugarlabs.org>
>> http://download.sugarlabs.org. Each activity has an 'add-on' id
>> (4000-4999 at the moment). Versions of activities are numbered beginning
>> with 1 and incrementing by 1 with subsequent versions. So the directories
>> in ASLO contain bundles for multiple bundles with the highest numbered
>> version considered the latest. In addition to the bundle, the site contains
>> metadata which is displayed in the pages devoted to an activity. I suspect
>> this metadata is stored in a database but I haven't investigated to find
>> out the details.
>>
>> In the meantime, Sugar Labs has decided to create a repository for
>> activities in github. The reasoning appears to be that this will make it
>> easier for the community to undertake ongoing development and maintenance
>> of these activities. Currently, the ASLO site has a 'developer hub' which
>> allows registered users to add or update their own activities. This
>> function will need defined and moved to github.
>>
>> How this will be done is a mystery to me. Logically, each of the versions
>> of an activity should be commited in git so that a developer (or
>> maintainer) can the changes made over time. Also, some method is needed to
>> manage over 600 additional repositories in the Sugar Labs github.
>>
>> If you look at the ASLO site, it seems clear that the page needs to
>> specify more than which versions of Sugar are supported. It will need to
>> specify which models of the XO are supported. It will also need to mention
>> any restrictions on architecture or peripherals needed for the users system
>> (microphone, camera, network connection - wired or wireless, and so on).
>>
>> Over time, Sugar has dropped many packages which were ordinarily
>> included. This has rendered many of the activities currently unusable. For
>> example, Sugar switched from a browser based on hulahop to one based on
>> WebKit. Some effort will be needed to update activities using hulahop to
>> use WebKit. Sugar Labs hopes that activities will be ported to GTK3 (called
>> sugar3) from the original GTK (sugar). If this can be accomplished, the
>> size and complexity of Sugar can be significantly reduced.
>>
>> I hope you will consider this challenging and not discouraging.
>>
>> Just for further background. Many deployments I work with have no access
>> to the internet. To provide an alternative, I support a school server which
>> XO users can access by wifi in the classroom. My hope is to provide a
>> version of ASLO on the school server which will give these users the
>> ability to install any of the activities they choose and for which their XO
>> has storage capacity. That capability exists now (and has for some years).
>> However, the selection is basically a list of activities by name and does
>> not provide the metadata descriptions found on the ASLO pages. My plan is
>> to use Django (which enables code to be in Python and not PhP). The school
>> server already provides sqllite, mariadb, and postgresql so db support is
>> readily available. Django is designed to support fusion - creating web
>> pages dynamically based on information from a db and so should match the
>> requirement.
>>
>> Tony
>>
>> On 04/01/2017 04:00 PM, Jatin Dhankhar wrote:
>>
>> Hi Tony,
>>
>> There are two major elements to Sugar. The desktop interface - Sugar and
>>> the activities. ASLO is a library of these activities. Build only applies
>>> to Sugar.
>>>
>>> For a non-XO version of Sugar, there are two easy choices: SOAS and
>>> Sugar on Ubuntu. For Ubuntu, install 14.04 or more recent version (I am
>>> using 16.04) and execute sudo apt-get install sucrose. For SOAS, download
>>> the image and dd it to a usb stick. It works as a livecd.
>>
>>
>> Thank you for all the information :)
>>
>> Make Your Own Sugar Activities!
>>> By James Simmons
>>> <http://www.lulu.com/shop/search.ep?contributorId=739770>
>>>
>>> Make sure to get the second edition.
>>>
>> Specially the book, it's very detailed and comprehensive.
>>
>> Another alternative is to build the 'development environment'. This
>>> environment is intended for developers who are working directly on PRs for
>>> Sugar modules.
>>
>>
>> Yes, I am looking to build the 'development environment', specially the
>> ASLO server but I am facing some issues. since sphinx is very old and
>> cannot be compiled (using make) properly. Wanted to know if there is
>> someone who maintains the ASLO and  can answer this specific query, related
>> to building ASLO locally and getting started on it
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Jatin Dhankhar
>>
>> On Sat, Apr 1, 2017 at 6:31 AM, Tony Anderson < <tony_anderson at usa.net>
>> tony_anderson at usa.net> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi Jatin,
>>>
>>> There are two major elements to Sugar. The desktop interface - Sugar and
>>> the activities. ASLO is a library of these activities. Build only applies
>>> to Sugar.
>>>
>>> For a non-XO version of Sugar, there are two easy choices: SOAS and
>>> Sugar on Ubuntu. For Ubuntu, install 14.04 or more recent version (I am
>>> using 16.04) and execute sudo apt-get install sucrose. For SOAS, download
>>> the image and dd it to a usb stick. It works as a livecd.
>>>
>>> Another alternative is to build the 'development environment'. This
>>> environment is intended for developers who are working directly on PRs for
>>> Sugar modules.
>>>
>>> In deploying Sugar, the only fully supported platform is the XO. The
>>> Ubuntu Sugar appears not to connect to networks and omits some of the
>>> essential activities. These are the essential eight: Browse, Record,
>>> Jukebox, Terminal, Log, Write, Read, and Image Viewer. Several of these
>>> such as Record provide access to hardware features of the platform such as
>>> the camera and microphone. Naturally, these are more difficult to support
>>> on general platforms.
>>>
>>> There are two programming environments for Sugar activities: Python and
>>> Javascript. HelloWorld and HelloWeb are simple examples of activities in
>>> Python and Javascript, respectively. There is an excellent text available
>>> for download online:
>>>
>>> Make Your Own Sugar Activities!
>>> By James Simmons
>>> <http://www.lulu.com/shop/search.ep?contributorId=739770>
>>>
>>> Make sure to get the second edition.
>>> Tony
>>>
>>> On 04/01/2017 12:00 AM, <aslo-request at lists.sugarlabs.org>
>>> aslo-request at lists.sugarlabs.org wrote:
>>>
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>>>
>>> Today's Topics:
>>>
>>>    1. ASLO build and deployment process (Jatin Dhankhar)
>>>
>>>
>>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>> Message: 1
>>> Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2017 16:57:58 +0530
>>> From: Jatin Dhankhar <dhankhar.jatin at gmail.com> <dhankhar.jatin at gmail.com>
>>> To: aslo at lists.sugarlabs.org
>>> Subject: [ASLO] ASLO build and deployment process
>>> Message-ID:
>>> 	<CAD+LdAF26TWi9uPP0pPZPTFWm3L5HF3=ubc4_TBY9O8v_e=T1Q at mail.gmail.com> <CAD+LdAF26TWi9uPP0pPZPTFWm3L5HF3=ubc4_TBY9O8v_e=T1Q at mail.gmail.com>
>>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> I have few questions about how ASLO is actually build and deployed in
>>> production. Build process is carried out by using Fabfile, I tried using
>>>  it and was not successful in building the sphinx ( since version used is
>>> 0.9.9.rc2 and current series is 2.x).
>>> Relevant pull request and issue
>>> PR -> https://github.com/sugarlabs/aslo/pull/2
>>> Issue -> https://github.com/sugarlabs/aslo/issues/1
>>>
>>> I am using Arch Linux and have installed all the necessary dependencies for
>>> development including mysql and postgres development libraries along with
>>> common development libraries. If anyone can point on how to successfully
>>> build the project that would help a lot.
>>> Some thread points out upgrading to new version of Sphinx but I wanted to
>>> mirror the current instance.
>>> Also project mentions something about Remorahttps://wiki.mozilla.org/Update:Remora and wiki says it's no longer
>>> maintained.
>>> It quotes
>>>
>>>
>>> Remora is no longer maintained. See AMO:Developers<https://wiki.mozilla.org/AMO:Developers> <https://wiki.mozilla.org/AMO:Developers>.
>>>
>>> Also wanted to know more about how ASLO is deployed in production. What
>>> techniques are used ? What are the pain points that need to be addressed
>>> and tips on how to get started with it. If anyone is familiar with ASLO or
>>> a long time maintainer, can they point out on how to reproduce a successful
>>> build of ASLO (a documentation on how to run would be awesome)
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Jatin Dhankhar
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