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

[James Cameron]

On Fri, Aug 30, 2019 at 07:48:26AM +0100, Peter Robinson wrote:
> 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.

There's no need for that.  You can grab from GitHub.

I've released 0.115 for three modules.  That should get you started.

> > 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.

0.115 does not depend on the Python 2 Telepathy static binding.

sugar-toolkit-gtk3 can be built for Python 3 and Python 2.

> > 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?

I don't know what you mean, sorry.  See GitHub for latest source of
datastore and outstanding issues.

> > 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.

I predict you will have to retire all those activities.  I've no idea
how they got into SoaS in the first place, but they've lasted for long
enough without a maintainer.

> > 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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-- 
James Cameron
http://quozl.netrek.org/