[SoaS] The plan moving forward for SoaS with Fedora 31 and Fedora 32

[Peter Robinson]

On Fri, Aug 30, 2019 at 12:02 AM James Cameron <quozl at laptop.org> wrote:
>
> On Thu, Aug 29, 2019 at 08:41:32AM -0700, Alex Perez wrote:
> > Forwarding an abridged version of Peter's response to the SoaS ML for
> > completeness, and so we can continue the conversation there.
>
> Thanks.  Interesting.
>
> > -------- Forwarded Message --------
> > Subject: Re: Packages in Fedora
> >    Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2019 10:02:59 +0100
> >    From: Peter Robinson <pbrobinson at gmail.com>
> >      To: Alex Perez <aperez at alexperez.com>
> > Hi Alex,
> >
> > > Thanks for reaching out. I am working on Telepathy-salut and
> > > telepathy-gabble buildability tomorrow evening.
> >
> > Reach out on IRC or email if you need help there.
> >
> > With this update I think we're over the line for Beta and hence out of
> > the woods for the moment.
> >
> > https://bodhi.fedoraproject.org/updates/FEDORA-2019-dd8c4e8c66
>
> Paraphrasing, gnome-python2 did fail to build and has been fixed.
> My comment; the dependency should disappear with 0.115.

Yes, and in fact I believe, although may well be wrong here, it's
purely a dependency of the old gtk2 sugar-toolkit and associated
Activities and will basically disappear when we decide to drop any
that haven't moved to gtk3.

> > If you could test and provide karma on it that would be great, it's
> > basically approved as a freeze exception so once that is ACKed we
> > should have images. I also updated to the 0.114 release as part of
> > that update.
> >
> > F-31 has branched off Rawhide now and I
> > think we get that working as a compose, which should happen in the
> > next day or so. It has 0.114 so we test and basically call that one
> > done.
> >
> > Rawhide is open now for F-32 development for a May release next year
> > and we aim that one for python3. We have working images as of today
> > for that with basically the same contents as F-31.
> >
> > The following bug has all the other python2 bugs attached to it so I'm
> > using it as a general tracker:
> > https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1737929
> >
> > The way I see it what we need to do is as follows:
> >
> > 1) Move as many Activities over sugar-toolkit-gtk3 as possible, kill
> > off the rest and retire sugar-toolkit (and I think we can retire
> > sugar-base then too). See details below around some of this below.
> > There was a thread a number of months ago where a bunch of these were
> > discussed. There doesn't appear to have been much movement, some just
> > need a release tagged.
>
> Yes, please.  We have a checklist for this;
> https://github.com/sugarlabs/sugar-docs/blob/master/src/contributing.md#checklist---maintainer

Who from the Sugar community is going to take the lead on this?

> > 2)  Build a version of sugar-toolkit-gtk3 that supports both python2
> > and python3 Basically sugar-activity3. I believe this should actually
> > be possible with 0.114 to some degree but a new release would likely
> > be better. This allows Activities move over independently. Once the
> > migration is complete we disable the python2 build.
>
> Using 0.114 is doable if you can keep the Python 2 Telepathy static
> binding.  If you can't, then use TelepathyGLib, with 88ea8e1 ("Port to
> TelepathyGLib").
>
> You'll also hit porting bugs found after 0.114, especially when you
> begin to package activities; 381c9b1 ("Fix install TypeError").
>
> You may also need ed46c21 ("Port to six") and the two others following.
>
> I'm working toward 0.115 but there are critical bugs yet to fix, so
> attention on these would be welcome.  Please get involved.

Can we have a 0.114.9x series of RCs done as we go towards that
release tagged? That would make it easier to get it into Rawhide and
people can then just grab nightly composes to test against which in
turn will assist in finding critical issues.

> https://github.com/orgs/sugarlabs/projects/1
>
> None of them are on the toolkit.
>
> > 3) Move the core sugar UX to python3. I believe we should be able
> > sugar UX and datastore over independently as I believe the Activities
> > communicate with the later via dbus.
>
> Yes, you can keep sugar on Python 2, if you can keep the Python 2
> Telepathy static binding.  If you can't, you'll need sugar:f8f506b
> ("Port to TelepathyGLib").

I've got python-telepathy on the list of py2 packages we currently
depend on. Ultimately if we can move the core sugar UX, datastore and
any Activities to py3 while keeping a sugar-toolkit-gtk3 that's py2
compatible I would prefer moving as much as possible to py3.

> Yes, you can keep datastore on Python 2, if you can keep Xapian, which
> you said in April was failing to build.  While the port to Python 3 is
> done, it introduced a new bug losing datatypes of metadata, breaking
> previews.

We actually got that fixed up with a terrible hack. Does datastore run
on it's own and can be moved to py3?

> https://github.com/sugarlabs/sugar-datastore/issues/16
>
> > What have I missed, what are your thoughts?
> >
> > >  From what I can see at
> > > https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/31/Schedule we have less than
> > > two weeks until the desired initial beta release date.
> >
> > Correct, but we're currently in freeze which means all changes have to
> > fix bugs and go through QA approval process.
> >
> > Status of Activities still reliant on GTK2 based sugar-toolkit:
> > sugar-castle - no idea
>
> Not yet ported.  Not yet in a GitHub repository.  Needs a maintainer.
> http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addon/4397
>
> > sugar-connect - no idea
>
> Not yet ported.  Not yet in a GitHub repository.  Needs a maintainer.
> http://dev.laptop.org/git/projects/connect-activity/
>
> > sugar-countries - appears to have been ported to GTK3 but no release
>
> Yes.  Needs a maintainer.
> https://github.com/sugarlabs/countries-activity
>
> > sugar-deducto - appears to have been ported to GTK3 but no release
>
> Yes.  Needs a maintainer.
> https://github.com/sugarlabs/deducto
>
> > sugar-flipsticks - no movement of note
>
> Some movement, not enough.  Tracked upstream
> https://github.com/sugarlabs/flipsticks/issues/2
> https://github.com/yashagrawal3/flipsticks/tree/gtk3 (stalled work in
> progress)
>
> > sugar-kuku - no idea
>
> Not yet ported.  Not yet in a GitHub repository.  Needs a maintainer.
> http://git.sugarlabs.org/kukuanakula
> http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addon/4526
>
> > sugar-labyrinth - not sure
>
> Not yet ported.  Tracked upstream
> https://github.com/sugarlabs/labyrinth-activity/issues/3
> Tracker further upstream
> https://github.com/labyrinth-team/labyrinth/issues/1
> Needs a maintainer.
>
> > sugar-playgo - some movement not idea if gtk3
>
> Ported.  Not yet released.  Needs a maintainer.
> https://github.com/sugarlabs/playgo-activity
>
> > sugar-srilanka - no idea
>
> Ported.  Not yet released.  Needs a maintainer.
> https://github.com/sugarlabs/iknowSriLanka
>
> > sugar-starchart - nothing recent except translations
>
> Port in progress, but abandoned.
> https://github.com/sugarlabs/starchart/issues/4
> https://github.com/sugarlabs/starchart/pull/6
>
> > sugar-view-slides - recent work, maybe gtk3, no release
>
> Ported.  Not yet released.  Needs a maintainer.
> https://github.com/sugarlabs/viewslides
>
> > sugar-xomail - no idea
>
> Forget it.
> http://git.sugarlabs.org/projects/sweetmail (abandoned work in progress)
>
> Also, I note that sugar-calendario was orphaned, though it has been
> ported and also not yet released.  Needs a maintainer.
>
> Since my last review in September 2019, not much happened.  We had a
> Google Summer of Code student working on releasing activities, but
> none were released, and only one of those above were chosen.

So it seems overall here there's generally no movement overall. I'm
going to put a date of Jan 31st 2020, the rough date that F-32 will
branch from Rawhide on it's way to stable, to have the Sugar community
sort out the maintenance of these and get them moved to
sugar-toolkit-gtk3, that will mean that gtk3 will have been around for
~ 8 years (at least in Fedorra) and that should be enough time for
anyone to port, at that point I'll retire sugar-toolkit and any
Activities that still depend on it.

> https://github.com/sugarlabs/GSoC/blob/master/Ideas-2019.md#improve-and-maintain-25-sugar-activities
> https://github.com/sugarlabs/GSoC/blob/master/archives/2019/student-reports/improve-and-maintain-25-activities-Swarup-N.md
>
> --
> James Cameron
> http://quozl.netrek.org/
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