[Sugar-devel] Activity packaging

[Aleksey Lim]

On Wed, Aug 04, 2010 at 08:05:06PM +0100, pbrobinson at gmail.com wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 6, 2010 at 5:02 PM, Benjamin M. Schwartz
> <bmschwar at fas.harvard.edu> wrote:
> > On 07/06/2010 11:51 AM, Bernie Innocenti wrote:
> >> Ok, I think the requirements for activity bundles could be:
> >>
> >> 1) Support multiple CPU architectures
> >>
> >> 2) Support multiple distros (and different versions of same distro)
> >>
> >> 3) Centralized build cluster (submit one source package, get multiple
> >>    binary packages)
> >>
> >> 4) Support inter-bundle dependencies
> >>    (e.g.: GCompris + voices, OOo4Kids + dictionaries)
> >>
> >> 5) Support activity <-> OS dependencies (e.g.: espeak for Speak,
> >>    squeak for etoys...)
> >>
> >> 6) Work with any programming language (setup.py is python-centric)
> >>
> >> 7) Easy to learn for activity writers without too much distro-hacking
> >> experience
> >>
> >>
> >> These requirements would fit well both rpm and deb, with OpenSUSE Build
> >> Service or their native build clusters.
> >
> > I think you are missing an important requirement: installation without
> > elevated permissions.
> 
> PackageKit can already do that. There was a furore around 6 months ago
> when someone enabled it by default for Fedora.

Thats right, and all PackageKit benefits will be reused within
0sugar/0install (but mostly for non-sugar dependencies, it will be
possible to reuse native packages for sugar application as well but see
below).

But the one of core ideas to not use only regular packaging systems
(via PackageKit or directly) is having this, natural and desired,
scenario for sugar ecosystem:

* there is an activity,
* several users might decide to experiment w/ this activity
  (i.e. change its code) and share this results
* third user wants to try all these experiments (including pristine
  activity)

This scenario is pretty undoable (by design) in native packaging systems
but 0install is designed to support scenarios like that (all
activity implementation are stored in separate directories in user's
home and can be launched in any time and even at the same time).

-- 
Aleksey