[sugar] Modularizing activities

[Bernie Innocenti]

[cc += sugar]

Marco Pesenti Gritti wrote:
> I like these ideas very much... I'm not sure about the separation of
> sugar core and activities though. I tend to think we should have a
> unified release process for them (at least on the short time) and
> having two different trac would probably make it harder.

The Linux kernel keeps all drivers in the tree because this is
the only way you can quickly change internal interfaces without
the burden of backwards compatibility.

Xorg modularized too much, and now every time they refactor the
server all drivers break and some remain broken for 6 months or
longer.

Sugar might be different: there could be very little shared code
between the shell and the activities.  Communication is mostly
dbus based, and protocols are notoriously much easier to keep
stable than APIs.

All considered, I think that keeping a core group of activities
with the rest of Sugar would be a good idea.  This is also what
KDE and Gnome do.

---

Someone might ask: why does bernie continuously bring up other
projects for any project management issue?

The answer is that I consider us as a very young project.
Looking at mature projects such as the Linux and KDE provides a lot
of insight into how things might evolve in the future.

This does not mean we should blindly follow what the others did even
when we have a strong feeling it would not work.  But when the
best choice is not obvious, following the steps of someone who was
successful before you minimizes the risk of making a bad decision.

-- 
   \___/
  _| o |  Bernie Innocenti - http://www.codewiz.org/
  \|_X_|  "It's an education project, not a laptop project!"