[Sugar-devel] [IAEP] Activity version compatibility

[Bill Bogstad]

On Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 7:43 AM, Bert Freudenberg <bert at freudenbergs.de> wrote:
> (moving to devel list)
>
> I thought that's what host_version is for?

I asked that exact question seven days ago:

http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/sugar-devel/2009-September/019643.html

I'm copying the relevant part of that message below.  My suggested
design appears to be similar to Wade's with two major differences:

1. I suggested hijacking host_version instead of creating a new field.
2. I suggested adding an API so that an activity could query the
actual version and adapt itself to the underlying functionality.

Bill Bogstad

Here's the excerpt:

The lack of good dependency reporting and version tracking for
Activities makes this difficult.   Something like XO bundles could
work better for  for some scenarios though.

For example, has anyone ever done anything with the 'host_version'
field in the Activities *.info file?  Maybe it could be hijacked for
Sugar library dependencies. Not as remotely capable as full dependency
checking, but core Sugar (glucose) could at least use this for direct
Activity dependency issues.  Preferentially with a pop-up telling
people there may be incompatibilities.  Activities that stick with
direct Sugar supplied functionality would be safe.  Glucose would know
what range of values it supports and would alert if an Activity is
outside of that range.  Activities would request the minimum value
that works for them in their info file. Perhaps Activities could also
query for the maximum value supported and change their behavior based
on it.  (This assumes that Glucose functionality is monotonically
increasing and the cost of retaining compatibility with older versions
of the Glucose API is reasonable for at least a few releases.)

I

>
> - Bert -
>
> On 28.09.2009, at 02:40, Wade Brainerd wrote:
>
>> Tentative patches posted to http://dev.sugarlabs.org/ticket/1442.
>>
>> An Alert when attempting to install the .xo bundle would be really
>> nice, but this at least prevents the activity from appearing in the
>> list.  It also adds the raw data, which could be displayed in the
>> bundle's metadata.
>>
>> -Wade
>>
>> On Sun, Sep 27, 2009 at 7:13 PM, Wade Brainerd <wadetb at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> This might be a good time to introduce an optional
>> "sugar_version=..." field into activity.info, so we can display a
>> human readable error message when this mistake happens.  The
>> activity will not launch unless Sugar's version is greater than or
>> equal to the activity.info field.  Most activities will not need it,
>> but in case of using non-backwards compatible APIs it will be handy.
>>
>> Is this too big a change to patch 0.84 and 0.86 with?  It will take
>> at least two releases before it can have any real benefit.
>>
>> Regards,
>> -Wade
>>
>> On Sat, Sep 26, 2009 at 10:15 PM, Gary C Martin
>> <gary at garycmartin.com> wrote:
>> Hi Gerald,
>>
>> Many thanks for the feedback.
>>
>> On 27 Sep 2009, at 02:52, Gerald Ardito wrote:
>>
>> > Gary,
>> >
>> > This image came from Caroline Meeks at Solution Grove. It came as
>> > part of a version of SOAS that she put together for me.
>> >
>> > Gerald
>>
>> OK, looks like a SoaS build mistake.
>>
>> Caroline, just a quick ping. Checking activities.sugarlabs.org, it
>> tells me Write-63 was the last version compatible with Sugar 0.84.x. I
>> believe Aleksey started working on the new 0.85.x toolbar code as of
>> version 64, breaking compatibility with earlier versions of Sugar:
>>
>>        http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addons/versions/
>> 4201
>>
>> Regards,
>> --Gary
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>>
>>
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