[Sugar-devel] Physics activity development

[Gary C Martin]

Hi Asaf,

On 27 May 2009, at 05:00, Asaf Paris Mandoki wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I would like to get started adding the play/pause button and the pin  
> button. Probably the next step is to integrate the activity with the  
> journal. The only problem is that I haven't been able to get my  
> development environment working. It seems there are some open issues  
> with ubuntu. My plan right now is to wait until the Ubuntu issues  
> are fixed. Any suggestions for a better setup? The only thing I have  
> working now is a virtualbox environment where i've been testing the  
> activity and found some bugs. I saw a commit with the "joystick"  
> feature removed. Is the base code ready to start adding the minor  
> button changes?

As for my part I'll hold off making any changes for now. Too many  
cooks, but a nice situation to be in :-)

Other than recommending, A) trying to keep in the habit of working in  
your own git branch and then merging back to master when stable; or B)  
use Gitorious to just clone the repository and work there, then make a  
merge request when your done (this option is more visible as folks can  
see what you doing as you commit changes and you can also give your  
branch a nice visible name).

Have a chat and co-ordinate with Brian and see what his current plans  
are; the other usual way to communicate would be to create trac  
tickets (dev.sugarlabs.org) for the bugs/features you want to work on,  
assign it to yourself, and cc: the others involved (bjordan and myself  
at the moment) – unfortunately the Physics component has not yet been  
added (and there is no temporary 'other') so you'll need to email/chat  
just for now.

Regarding development environments; I have a Mac here, so spend most  
time in VirtualBox with Fedora 10 and sugar-jhbuild, though I'd have a  
much simpler Activity development set-up if I could just use a recent  
Sugar distro in VirtualBox, but the distros are all still a little too  
'pre-release' to want to rely on just now – running a Mac, running  
VirtualBox, running sugar-jhbuild, running Sugar is rather a wasteful  
and large stack of code I hope to avoid at some point :-)

Regards,
--Gary

> Thanks,
> Asaf
>
>
> On Mon, May 25, 2009 at 2:17 AM, Brian Jordan <bcjordan at gmail.com>  
> wrote:
> On Sun, May 24, 2009 at 8:59 PM, Gary C Martin  
> <gary at garycmartin.com> wrote:
> > Hi Brian,
> >
> > On 24 May 2009, at 18:36, Brian Jordan wrote:
> >
> >> Hey all,
> >>
> >> Gary -- when you get a chance, can you add me as a committer on
> >> git.sl.o?  I'd like to help clean things up!
> >
> > You're added! :-)
> >
> > Can I request we try and make small clean commits and try to let  
> others know
> > what we are doing. If you want to hack, Gitorious supports quite a  
> nice
> > 'Clone repository' and then 'Request merge' process (no commit  
> rights needed
> > for the main project). The alternative, if you know what you are  
> doing, is
> > just make your own local git branch to hack on, so you can take  
> care of any
> > merge/conflict issues yourself when you fold it back into the  
> current
> > master.
> >
> > I'm far from a git expert, but I can recommend some bed time  
> reading at:
> >
> >        http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~cduan/technical/git/
> >
> > and/or
> >
> >        http://gitready.com/
> >
>
> Thank you, will devote some to that!  Need to learn to keep my crazy
> features in branches.
>
> > I'd like to get on with Labyrinth work, if you're willing to have  
> an initial
> > clean up of the Physics source in the next few days... so what was
> > 'joysitck' feature all about? ;-)
>
> This would probably be best to describe on the wiki page, the idea was
> to make a UI for assigning keys on the XO-1 to impulses or changes on
> certain objects, so simple 2 player physics based games could be made
> from within Physics.
>
> Agreed, though, I will rid that from the code so we have a nice base
> line for crazy-feature branches.
>
> > Once the dev.sugarlabs.org component is added we should add the
> > features/bugs in there to keep them all together. FWIW, from a UI  
> point of
> > view I had in mind:
> >
> > 1) remove/disable 'joysitick' feature as I have no idea what it  
> was meant to
> > be ;-)
> > 2) build tool buttons correctly using RadioToolButton so they  
> display state
> > correctly
> > 3) use set_accelerator to define visible keyboard shortcuts for  
> the tools
> >
> >> Asaf -- do you have a http://git.sugarlabs.org account yet?
> >>
> >> This is some feedback from Asaf (these could fit as enhancements in
> >> http://dev.sugarlabs.org/ ):
> >>
> >>> While playing with the activity I found a "pause" button to stop  
> time
> >>> could be very useful. It's complicated to build elaborate  
> contraptions
> >>> if everything keeps falling. Maybe while everything is paused,
> >>> positions an velocities of objects could be modified.
> >>>
> >>> A minor modification I suggest is to create a separate button for
> >>> adding push pins. It is not intuitive to add them using the link  
> tool.
> >>> If there are plans about creating tutorial levels this isn't that
> >>> necessary although I don't see any harm on adding it.
> >>>
> >>> An other thing I think could be grate is to be able to create
> >>> attractors an repulsors. With stuff like this it gets pretty
> >>> interesting, we could have objects orbiting around the attractors.
> >
> > Yes, all good stuff, there's also a list on
> > http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Physics_%28activity%29 as well, but I'd  
> vote for
> > cleaning up what we have first, perhaps adding a play/pause, and  
> keeping
> > Journal state so kids can actually keep their Physics creations  
> (and send
> > them to friends when using sugar 0.84).
>
> +1 +1 +1
>
> Brian
>
> >
> > Regards,
> > --Gary
> >
> >> Thanks
> >>
> >> Brian
> >>
> >> On Sun, May 24, 2009 at 4:17 PM, Gary C Martin <gary at garycmartin.com 
> >
> >> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> Hey Brian,
> >>>
> >>> On 24 May 2009, at 13:57, Brian Jordan wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> Hey Gary,
> >>>>
> >>>> First, I'm attaching Asaf Paris Mandoki, who contacted me last  
> week
> >>>> with an interest in developing on the Physics activity, and has  
> great
> >>>> ideas of things to add.  This is a great opportunity!  :)
> >>>>
> >>>> I can handle getting Physics on gitorious, the bug tracker and  
> a.sl.o.
> >>>> I will try to complete this by the end of today.
> >>>
> >>> Having chatted with Alex Levenson, I've already kicked off the  
> migration
> >>> for
> >>> Physics (rep is now in Gitorious, trac request is in, and I've  
> started to
> >>> poke at the code, running well at least in sugar-jhbuild and  
> sugar 0.84).
> >>> X2o is next on my hit list once Physics is in a reasonable state.
> >>>
> >>>> The things I can use some help with are (1) integrating proper
> >>>> localization to the activity and
> >>>
> >>> Yep, I'm going to do a pass at the code and tidy up some partially
> >>> implemented / broken UI stuff, before requesting it's addition  
> to pootle
> >>> (best to start with a reasonably stable set of strings). Would  
> also like
> >>> to
> >>> get/text resolution independence (for non XO hardware) and get  
> the scene
> >>> state saving to Journal...
> >>>
> >>> Want to get the basics out the way first before we break it  
> again with
> >>> exciting new features ;-)
> >>>
> >>>> (2) figuring out a good way to include the pybox2d source in  
> the git
> >>>> repository, while including an
> >>>> F9-compatible binary on a.sl.o (this was brought up w.r.t.  
> Pippy a
> >>>> couple of times on the fedora devel lists, but I don't remember  
> seeing
> >>>> a clear way of how to handle it).
> >>>
> >>> Yea I was worried this might be an issue needing resolved, it's  
> not my
> >>> area
> >>> of speciality, I'll need to take a deeper look at the source.
> >>>
> >>>> Thanks for the ping and your help!!
> >>>
> >>> No, thank you! I was expecting a wall of silence :-)
> >>>
> >>> Regards,
> >>> --Gary
> >>>
> >>>> Brian
> >>>>
> >>>> On Sat, May 23, 2009 at 3:19 PM, Gary C Martin <gary at garycmartin.com 
> >
> >>>> wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Hi Guys,
> >>>>>
> >>>>> I'm making contact to see if any of you are still interested in
> >>>>> developing
> >>>>> your great Physics activity? Most of the active activity  
> development
> >>>>> has
> >>>>> now
> >>>>> moved over to Sugar Labs infrastructure, and we've been  
> getting some
> >>>>> requests for localising Physics.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> We have a Gitorious based source repository (there's no admin  
> request
> >>>>> procedure, you can just register an account and migrate/create a
> >>>>> project):
> >>>>>
> >>>>>      http://git.sugarlabs.org/
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Our bug-tracker trac is at:
> >>>>>
> >>>>>      http://dev.sugarlabs.org/
> >>>>>
> >>>>> For activity distribution, Sugar Labs is customising Mozilla  
> addon's
> >>>>> web
> >>>>> front/back end (we're trying to encourage activity developers  
> to post
> >>>>> there
> >>>>> activity bundles here), it's still a little ugly but the theme/ 
> UI is
> >>>>> still a
> >>>>> work in progress :-)
> >>>>>
> >>>>>      http://activities.sugarlabs.org/
> >>>>>
> >>>>> If no one is available to help, I'd be happy to migrate  
> Physics over to
> >>>>> the
> >>>>> Sugar Labs infrastructure, get it added to pootle so we can  
> start
> >>>>> localisation and make sure bundles get released for easy  
> download and
> >>>>> inclusion in images/distrobutions. If someone finds they have  
> some time
> >>>>> to
> >>>>> come back later just ping me and I can easily add extra  
> commiters;
> >>>>> though
> >>>>> with Gitorious, any one can branch anything, hack a bit, then  
> submit a
> >>>>> merge
> >>>>> request (great workflow for dipping in and out of projects).
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Kind Regards,
> >>>>> Gary C Martin
> >>>>> Sugar Labs Activity Team
> >>>>> http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activity_Team
> >>>>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Brian Jordan
> OLPC Learning Team Technical Contractor
> Mobile Phone: +250 0783864924
> Skype: bcjordan
>