[Sugar-devel] [ANNOUNCE] Sucrose 0.89.3 Development Release

[Simon Schampijer]

Dear Sugar Community,

This is our third release in the 0.90 development cycle [1]!

We now reached Feature Freeze! We are glad to announce that two Features 
have been pushed already.

A new color selector [2] is available for the control panel, thanks to 
the ongoing efforts of Walter Bender and the design team. We already 
wanted to land the Feature in 0.88 but had so many ideas that we did not 
reach consensus in the end, thanks to everyone involved! Now, we are 
excited to hear what the learners think about it.

To mimic the mesh behavior on devices where mesh hardware is not 
available and make the "under a tree"-scenario possible the Sugar Ad-hoc 
networks have been added. The Feature [3] will add three default Ad-hoc 
networks, for channel 1, 6 and 11. They will be represented with 
designated icons in the neighborhood view. If Sugar sees no "known" 
network (the learner has not been connected to an currently available 
Access Point before) when it starts, it does autoconnect to an Ad-hoc 
network. First we try if there is an Ad-hoc network that is used by 
other learners in the area, if not we default to channel 1.

Another great Feature will be available in 0.89.4. This Feature [4] 
removes the need for the Presence Service, meaning that activities and 
the Shell need to interact directly with non-Sugar-specific services 
such as Telepathy. As it touches three modules reviewing took a few more 
days. Since it is the mayor 0.90 Feature we gave it a deadline 
exception. The code has been pushed as I am writing these lines...

Full release notes can be found at [5].

Thanks everyone for your great contributions!

In behalf of the sugar community,
     Your Release Team

[1] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/0.90/Roadmap#Schedule
[2] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Features/Enhanced_color_selector
[3] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Features/Sugar_Adhoc_Networks
[4] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Features/Remove_Presence_Service
[5] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/0.90/0.89.3_Notes