[IAEP] adding or updating an Activity: two typical teacher scenarios, let's lower barrier to installation

[Tomeu Vizoso]

On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 18:03, Gary C Martin <gary at garycmartin.com> wrote:
> On 27 May 2009, at 15:35, Sean DALY wrote:
>
>> Scenario 1:
>>
>> Let's say I'm a teacher reading about Sugar in a magazine. I consider
>> myself comfortable with computers, visit the web every day, but have
>> never used the command line. I've succeeded in downloading SoaS,
>> loading it onto a stick with the Fedora LiveUSB Creator and booting my
>> PC with it. I've tried a few Activities and am wondering what other
>> Activities are available. Later, back in Windows, I've visited
>> www.sugarlabs.org and found the Activities section. Browsing by
>> section, I find a couple of Activities that seem interesting. I've
>> clicked the pancake buttons and downloaded two .xo files and put them
>> on my hard disk where I usually store the attachments friends and
>> colleagues send me.
>>
>>
>> Scenario 2:
>>
>> A colleague has mentioned Sugar to me, talking about the OLPC project.
>> I have a Mac for ease of use and I never see a text screen. I visit
>> www.sugarlabs.org and after reading the "teachers" section with
>> interest, I return to the homepage and click on "Try Sugar with a
>> child today", arriving on the page that advises how to install for
>> each system; I click on the Apple icon. The boot helper instructions
>> seem complicated, but I find the VirtualBox OSX installation
>> instructions and get Sugar running. I'm intrigued by the Activities
>> and want to know if there are more, so I switch to my browser in the
>> other window, return to the Sugar Labs site and find a very
>> interesting-looking Activity in the website's Activities section. I
>> click the pancake button and download the .xo file to the Mac's
>> desktop.
>>
>>
>> ******************************
>> Questions:
>>
>> 1) what are the teachers' next step? Would the procedures be different
>> for these two scenarii?
>> * No instructions I could locate on activities.sugarlabs.org :-(
>> * In the wiki section, I eventually located Activity Library and found
>> a page called End Users, but two of the three pages are blank and the
>> other one talks about a sandbox...
>> * The search engine doesn't help either, there are lots of documents
>> found but none give advice about how to add an Activity or update to a
>> more recent one.
>>
>> 2) I think we are assuming Activity installation from within Browse
>> under Sugar, but that method may be too much to assume for a newbie or
>> for someone with no net connectivity with Sugar... "automatic" if
>> connected though I don't remember if a new Activity arrives in the
>> list view or is a favorite... we need to communicate what to expect in
>> that case
>
> Currently, installation of new Activities (via a GUI) is only via
> Browse on the system in question.

Actually, Browse just puts the downloaded file in the journal, as with
any other download. The shell notices the new .xo and installs it.
This means that by copying a .xo from an usb stick to the shell will
install it for you.

Also, when you resume an entry in a removable device it is first
copied to the main journal. So if you start a bundle from a removable
device, it will be installed first, then run.

Regards,

Tomeu

>> 3) Someone told me how to add an Activity by placing the .xo bundle in
>> a directory... but I can't find the mail :-( and CLI manipulations
>> daunting for many ordinary users
>
> If you are at the Sugar Terminal and have a .xo bundle accessible some
> place (perhaps you used the Terminal to scp/curl/wget/ftp the file
> from somewhere, or you are running Sugar in a Virtual Machine and are
> sharing some disk space with the host operating system where you've
> already downloaded an .xo bundle), the command you are after is:
>
>        sugar-install-bundle <the_activity.xo>
>
> This will install and place the Activity icon in the home favourite
> view (though unlike downloading via Browse, there will be no record of
> this new bundle in your Journal).
>
>> 4) If I remember correctly, a collaborative Activity set to public
>> sharing is pushed out over the network to other Sugar machines. Are
>> those machines permanently updated with more recent versions, or
>> installed if new versions, or merely "borrowed" during the session?
>
> No unfortunately not. I had high hopes of this when I first read of
> the idea in the early Sugar days, a great way to virally spread/
> distribute an Activity organically via peer to peer collaboration. But
> the feature has never been implemented (only sane to do in a world
> with Rainbow or some similar security blanket). It's worth noting that
> currently you only see shared Activities in the neighbourhood for
> Activities you already have installed.
>
>> 5) if there is a problem, is it possible to roll back to the previous
>> version of an Activity?
>
> If you have the previous Activity version as a bundle in your Journal
> still, I think so... (but will need to retest as it's been a while
> since I last tried this and things may have changed).
>
> Regards,
> --Gary
>
>> ******************************
>>
>> any info appreciated.
>>
>> The Marketing Team can help write installation tips copy if necessary.
>>
>> thanks
>>
>> Sean
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>
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