[Sugar-devel] Fwd: sugar-jhbuild

[David Farning]

On Wed, Jan 21, 2009 at 10:36 PM, Bill Kerr <billkerr at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 21, 2009 at 10:43 AM, David Farning <dfarning at sugarlabs.org>
> wrote:
>>
>> Tony,
>>
>> As far as running Jhbuild, I would look at
>> http://sugarlabs.org/go/DevelopmentTeam/Jhbuild It is quite a bit more
>> up to date then the resources you are looking at.
>>
>> Have you seen the work that the Sugar on a Stick people are doing at
>> http://sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick ?
>>
>> It is basically a live CD of Sugar running on a USB stick instead of a
>> Live CD.  This gives the user the option of saving their work.
>>
>> On the other hand, burning the .iso found on the SoaS page should get
>> you a working Sugar based liveCD.
>>
>> Caroline Meeks is heading up this effort.
>>
>> thanks
>> david
>
> So is sugar on a stick a suitable development environment. Could it be used
> as an environment for minor hacking of say, turtle art and saving changes?

SoaS is an ideal environment for learning.  There is no way to damage
the underlying system.  All changes are saved on the USB stick.  If
you screw something up, you can just re-flash the USB and start with a
fresh installation.  It is very handy for experimentation.

> My understanding is that since Sugar is written in Python and Python is an
> interpreted language then the answer to my question might be yes.

Yes, the user (budding developer) can hack at will on the activities.

> Is there anything missing from sugar on a stick that developers who use
> sugar-jhbuild value and use regularly? Would a developer be inconvenienced
> in some way by using sugar on a stick?

As marco pointed out, some of the core sugar pieces are written in C.
Development of those portions of the stack would be harder to develop
and test under sugar on a stick.

Luckily, you can install jhbuild on SoaS:)  The space constraints
might get tight:(

> Are some version of sugar on a stick better or worse than others for say
> hacking turtle art? eg. as well as the official version there is Wolfgang
> Rohrmoser's version. Is that equivalent?

I would recommend using the official SoaS or distribution LiveCD.
They are not necessarily better.  But, they will have stronger
support.

> Is there any advantage to using sugar-jhbuild, instead of sugar on a stick?
> For educators who are not developers using sugar on a stick looks more
> convenient. ie. to get sugar-jhbuild you need a linux computer, git and then
> sort through dependency problems as they arise. Bread and butter for
> developers but not everyones cup of tea. There are also technical
> complexities involved in  using emulators with the added disadvantage that
> they might run slow.
>
> I'm aware that some developers of other software use IDEs such as Eclipse
> which contain a full suite of useful tools for development. I've never used
> Eclipse but have used briefly similar sorts of tools (well some of them) in
> Smalltalk / Squeak. That is the sort of distinction I'm inquiring about -
> but there may be other important distinctions that I'm not aware of - you
> don't know what you don't know.

This is an interesting question. What editors would be available If
you use SoaS?  We will have to ask marco about that.  The hacker
editors are not going to be very good for dipping your toes in the
code.

david

> Our goal here is simply to put the toe in the water and be able to hack
> turtle art, as a starter. The blockage point identified here is a convenient
> way to obtain a developers environment.
>
>
> Known unknowns: All the things you know you don't know
> Unknown unknowns: All the things you don't know you don't know
> Errors: All the things you think you know but don't
> Unknown knowns: All the things you don't know you know
> Taboos: Dangerous, polluting or forbidden knowledge
> Denials: All the things too painful to know, so you don't
>
>
>
>
>
>>
>> On Wed, Jan 21, 2009 at 5:13 PM, Walter Bender <walter.bender at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> > Forwarding to list
>> >
>> > -walter
>> >
>> >
>> > ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>> > From:  <forster at ozonline.com.au>
>> > Date: Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 3:27 PM
>> > Subject: sugar-jhbuild
>> > To: walter.bender at gmail.com
>> > Cc: paultz at gmail.com, rgesthuizen at gmail.com,
>> > Costello.Rob.R at edumail.vic.gov.au, billkerr at gmail.com,
>> > joel.stan at gmail.com
>> >
>> >
>> > Walter,
>> >
>> > I was wondering, would it be possible to make a live CD with Linux and
>> > sugar jhbuild and the source code for a few activities all on it and
>> > use that for teachers and students to hack and test activities?
>> >
>> > Tony
>> >
>> > From: Bill Kerr <billkerr at gmail.com>
>> > Date: Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 8:19 PM
>> > Subject: sugar-jhbuild
>> > To: Paul T <paultz at gmail.com>, Tony Forster <forster at ozonline.com.au>,
>> > Roland Gesthuizen <rgesthuizen at gmail.com>, "Costello, Rob R" <
>> > Costello.Rob.R at edumail.vic.gov.au>
>> >
>> >
>> > http://magazine.redhat.com/2007/02/23/building-the-xo-introducing-sugar/
>> >
>> > this (old) article explains what sort of thing sugar-jhbuild is and
>> > where
>> > the jh in the name comes from - the 3 paragraphs under the 'Sugar
>> > Basics'
>> > heading
>> >
>> > this looks to me to be a better way to go than using emulators but still
>> > not
>> > easy
>> >
>> > the not easy quirkiness is confirmed by reading this:
>> > http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Sugar_with_sugar-jhbuild
>> >
>> > joel told me that he was making an activity using sugar-jhbuild but ran
>> > into
>> > some buggy issues that he couldn't solve even with the help of a couple
>> > of
>> > the developers
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > --
>> > Walter Bender
>> > Sugar Labs
>> > http://www.sugarlabs.org
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > Sugar-devel mailing list
>> > Sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org
>> > http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
>> >
>
>
>