[Sugar-devel] Activity platform discussion

[Aleksey Lim]

On Thu, Mar 19, 2009 at 09:00:38PM -0400, Wade Brainerd wrote:
> On activities.sugarlabs.org we are able to say what platforms a
> particular activity supports.
> 
> Note that this is in *addition* to describing the Sugar application
> version (0.82, 0.84, etc).  So the platform support has more to do
> with Python version (2.5 vs 2.6), available system packages,
> architecture, etc.
> 
> Currently we have:
> 
> OLPC Software Release 8.2.0 (Build 767)
> Sugar on a Stick 1 (F10 based)
> Sugar on a Stick 2 (F11 based)
> 
> Questions:
> 
> - Are there other OLPC builds we should add to the list?
> 
> 656?
> Others?
> 
> - How should we describe the distributions such as Caixa Magica?
> 
> We now have the "Sugar Platform 0.84" package set which is present in
> many distributions, so alsroot suggested that we simply advertise
> support for "SP 0.84" and drop the idea of platforms.
Since we have binary blobs in activities, the idea of "only SP" is useless.

In that case platforms tree on ASLO could include at least 1+2 levels:
- sugar version(SugarPlatform): All, 0.82 or 0.84
- OS: All(for activities w/ blobs), GNU/Linux, BSD, Mac ...
- architecture: All(for activities w/ blobs), x86, x86_64, PPC64, MIPS ...

Activity w/ chosen OS/ARCH options should include binaries for these OSs/ARCHs

Well, a bit confusing for non-tech users, but:
- its only for activities w/ binary blobs
- we could pre-filter list of accessible activities on ASLO for specific
  machine by parsing Browse's useragent string
- ...and we could rethink idea of blobs in activities

Moreover for the first time it could be collapsed to "only SP" with
OS switched to only GNU/Linux, architecture to only x86/x86_64

> But there are
> differences like Python 2.5 (SoaS1) vs 2.6 (SoaS2) that are
> independent of the SP.
I guess these differences won't be very popular(otherwise they should be
included in SugarPlatform specification) and activities could resolve it
by themselves(like json problem in python2.5/2.6)

> My thought is to add one more platform: "Linux with Sugar Platform
> 0.84" to cover these.
yup, thats another direction to go.

But scheme w/ "Linux with Sugar Platform 0.84" has a bit of skewness:
OLPC-767, soas-{1,2} are concrete platforms and could be dropped
from time to time, new platforms could be included as well(like soas-3)

It means we'll have to track all these platforms.. and confuse users by
including/excluding new/old platforms all time(even within one sugar
release cycle) -- it contrasts with idea of only SP-0.82/0.84/x

-- 
Aleksey