[Sugar-devel] Sugar on Debian

[Jonas Smedegaard]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA512

On Tue, Jul 14, 2009 at 11:23:46AM +0200, Sascha Silbe wrote:
>On Tue, Jul 14, 2009 at 10:54:43AM +0200, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
>
>[Sugar 0.84 in squeeze]
>>Did you actually try it?
>No, but I didn't try any other distro packages either.
>
>>My experiences with using the Sugar packages in unstable is not 
>>good.
>>
>>Using sugar-emulator, initial login fails.
>>It is probably a gconf problem.  Possibly only occurs when running 
>>a non-GNOME environment as I do.
>OK, can't help much in that case (but maybe someone else can) since 
>distro installs usually rely on Orbit for GConf, not DBus. It's a 
>pity that GConf-DBus seems to be unmaintained...

Do you mean to say that GConf-DBus is currently used with non-packaged 
Sugar, or just that it would be a cool idea to do so in the future?


> From what I know about the Orbit-based GConf it should start the 
>daemon automatically, so no explicit startup sequence required. Do 
>the logs in ~/.sugar/default/logs show anything unusual?

shell.log contains a single entry saying (in danish, my language) that 
/home/jonas/.sugar/default/owner.key.pub does not exist.

Xephyr just comes up with a black screen, and after the usual pile of 
warnings prints a couple of empty lines and then a segfault message 
(again in danish: Lagersegmentfejl).

It is not Xephyr segfaulting, but something else - Xephyr stays open 
with a black screen.

Uncommenting all in ~/.sugar/debug there is still only that single line 
in shell.log but a coredump is provided, coming (according to "file 
core") from /usr/bin/sugar-session.

How to investigate further?


>You could also try running "gconftool-2 -R /" to check whether 
>there's a more general gconf breakage.

Anything in specific that I should look for with that command?

Output includes the following 8 Sugar-related entries:

   /desktop/sugar:
    backup_url = 
    show_logout = true
    /desktop/sugar/user:
     nick = Jonas
     color = #BCCDFF,#FF2B34
    /desktop/sugar/collaboration:
     jabber_server = 
     publish_gadget = true
    /desktop/sugar/power:
     extreme = false
     automatic = false
    /desktop/sugar/date:
     timezone = UTC
    /desktop/sugar/sound:
     mute = false
     volume = 81
    /desktop/sugar/frame:
     edge_delay = 1000
     corner_delay = 0
    /desktop/sugar/desktop:
     favorites_mode = false
     favorites_layout = ring-layout

I assume those entries are there even when I remove ~/sugar to provoke a 
reinit of Sugar - which is what fails.



>>This problem have existed for a while now - but noone seems to have 
>>experienced it beyond me (no bugreports or questions about it on 
>>mailinglists), which make me suspect that noone use Sugar on Debian 
>>except me.
>That is highly likely as 0.82 was only the bare minimum in Debian and 
>quite buggy in general (in my experience).

Providing "the bare minimum" ideally should not be a problem, as 
additional activities can be installed from other sources.  Real problem 
here is that independently downloaded activities are both system- and 
architechture-dependent (not even tied to a fixed target like LSB) and 
.xo packaging format do not hint about environment(s) supported.

That said, The Debian package collection is not a complete Glucose 
(libraries for Read and Write are missing).


>I hope that some users will switch from sugar-jhbuild (which is 
>targeted to developers, not users) to Debian packages now that 0.84 is 
>available.

Your argument above was that 0.82 in Debian was minimal - so is 0.84.

I hope that some _developers_ will help package Sugar for Debian.


  - Jonas

- -- 
* Jonas Smedegaard - idealist og Internet-arkitekt
* Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

  [x] quote me freely  [ ] ask before reusing  [ ] keep private
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux)
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=c+J9
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----