[Sugar-devel] Physics activity development

[Lucian Branescu]

I'm in the same situation (well, I will be when I get my macbook back).

I do see a lot of talk towards making Sugar and activities behave more
like standard applications. Perhaps Sugar will work on OS X natively
some day.

2009/5/27 Gary C Martin <gary at garycmartin.com>:
> 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
>>
>
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