[sugar] Developer Console

[Eben Eliason]

> 1) Terminal-Activity, included by default in sugar but hided from the
> activities launcher menu. Can be activated with some key binding as
> 'alt + 9'.

This sounds really great.  I don't think we have to hide it
permanently.  I think any kid that wants to should be able to place
this activity in the frame.  I personally have the Terminal in my
Dock, and it's even in my startup items.  If we don't include
pre-installed activities in the Journal (there are mixed feelings on
this), then I'm not sure how that could be accomplished, though.

> 2) Create a simple Shell View with system information as: kernel
> version, build version, Serial Number, Activities information (bundle
> size, author, version...), CPU usage, presence service, etc

I might suggest making an "About this XO" type section within the
forthcoming control panel.  It seems that information such as build
number, serial number, and other hardware specs would be useful to
make easily accessible.  They relate directly to the XO itself, just
as the system prefs do, so I think this is a logical place for them.
(Relates to http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/900)

> 3) Memory Analysis acivity: An activity based on developer console
> where is possible to get different stats about the memory usage by: X
> Server, Activities, System process, etc.

This seems reasonable.  It's akin to the "Activity Monitor" in OSX.

> 4) Logviewer, an activity?, a shell view?, a separate gtk program ?

Also reasonable.  Akin to the "Console" in OSX. (I mention these
similarities because it's nice to see that an OS has already broken
down tasks in these ways.  It could be useful to see what types of
functionality these activities offer.

Another important consideration, though, is how these actually
function as activities. The Terminal can clearly be first class, and
each session entry in the Journal can store the command stack and
other bits of info (perhaps even environment settings?) which are
recovered when that session is resumed.  The session has meaning here.

With the Activity Monitor and Console activities, it's much less clear
to me that these have an associated state or create entries within the
Journal.  Maybe activities don't need artifacts (but this gets back to
the difference between logging nouns (objects) and logging verbs
(actions) in the Journal, which right now only does the former,
technically.

- Eben