[Sugar-devel] [ANNOUNCE] Harmonic Distribution 0.1 development release

[Aleksey Lim]

Hi all!


This is the first, at least in such composition, public development
release of projects that are being developed within the Harmonic
Distribution effort, initially started to support Hexoquinasa
(Peru, Puno) pilot[6]. This release should be treated as a kind of
preview of some basic ideas behind Harmonic Distribution and its
components.

More information about Harmonic Distribution might be found on Wiki [1].
In short, it is a system approach to provide a basis to support activity
of Sugar Learning Platform participants. It consist of two major parts:

* Basic software

  Accessible from common packages repository on all supported platforms[2]
  from Sweets Distribution[3]. There are/will-be two meta components[4]:

  * Sweets Desktop
    General purpose desktop of Sucrose and instruments to integrate it
    with the rest of the system

  * Sweets Server
    General purpose school server that consists of Server Kit components
    (that might be used on its own).

  This software exist in form of short-term support (mostly for
  individual usage) and long-term support (mostly for deployments)
  forms.

* Basic services

  These services will be provided via Sugar Network[5]:

  * Sharing Community software, i.e., the rest of software on top of
    Basic one
  * Sharing different kinds of content, e.g., artifacts created
    by Sugar Activities, books, etc.
  * Collaborative work between Sugar Network participants to improve
    Software, Content and learning process in general

  Sugar Network will be served from central [master] server and
  arbitrary amount of distributed [node] servers (when connectivity is a
  problem). For example, within Hexoquinasa pilot, XO-1.5 laptops will be
  used for that purpose.

== In this release ==

This release is about:

* SweetsDistribution:Factory repository with Glucose-0.94 and
  Sugar Network client, that will be used in Puno pilot,
  development version
* Sugar Network server (http://18.85.44.120:8000) that contains
  activities mirrored from Activities Library

To install Factory repository on all supported platforms[2], type the
following commands in terminal:

    wget http://download.sugarlabs.org/packages/sweets-distribution.sh
    sudo sh sweets-distribution.sh select Factory

This command will attach Sweets Distribution repository (Factory) to the
system (technically skilled people can do the same by attaching
repositories[7] directly). Then, install "sweets-desktop" package using
native packaging management system.

To launch newly installed Sugar Shell, click "Sugar" item in Education
menu or type in terminal:

    sweets-sugar-emulator

Installed packages, most of them, will not interfere with the current
system. For example, it will be possible to run new Shell on XO laptop
(with OS based on Fedora-14) even from native Sugar (but will be better
to start sweets-sugar-emulator from Gnome session because there will be
glitches between two Sugars).

To enable Sugar Network integration in Sugar Shell,

* in Sweets Control Panel component,
* enable "Integrate Sweets Distribution features" checkbox
* restart Sugar Shell

After restart,

* Home view will be empty - internal process of Sugar Network
  integration is in intermediate stage
* use F8 or activities bar to open Sugar Network client (icon with
  three dots in a circle)

In F8 view,

* browse activities on the server
* full-featured text searching
* launch activities (only pure Python and without dependencies)
* in detailed view of activity, there is an initial implementation of 
  new support resource form (question, idea, problem)
* support resources can be browsed in detailed view
* it is also possible to browse system wide support resources and
  users

== v0.2 plan ==

http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Platform_Team/Harmonic_Distribution/1.0/Todo#0.2

* continue working on Sugar Network client application
* support basic deployment procedures that need to be implemented
  for Hexoquinasa pilot.


[1] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Platform_Team/Harmonic_Distribution
[2] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Platform_Team/Harmonic_Distribution/Supported_platforms
[3] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sweets_Distribution
[4] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Platform_Team/Harmonic_Distribution/Software
[5] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_Network
[6] http://pe.sugarlabs.org/go/Proyecto_Piloto_Hexoquinasa
[7] http://download.sugarlabs.org/packages/SweetsDistribution/
    http://download.sugarlabs.org/packages/SweetsDistribution:/Factory/

-- 
Aleksey