[Sugar-devel] [DESIGN] Proposal: Contol-Panel packaging

[Peter Robinson]

On Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 3:43 AM, Jerry Vonau <jvonau at shaw.ca> wrote:
> On Mon, 2012-07-30 at 00:20 +0100, Peter Robinson wrote:
>> On Fri, Jul 27, 2012 at 4:42 PM, Daniel Drake <dsd at laptop.org> wrote:
>> > On Thu, Jul 26, 2012 at 7:51 PM, Jerry Vonau <jvonau at shaw.ca> wrote:
>> >> I would like to propose a feature for discussion and inclusion in the
>> >> 0.98 cycle is packaging all control-panel applets as rpms. As this
>> >> discussion does not impact the UI and more of a packaging issue I'm an
>> >> not creating a Features page. The discussion can take place here on the
>> >> mailing-list.
>> >
>> > This sounds like a good idea. Indeed, its not a sugar feature request,
>> > its more a packaging detail.
>> >
>> > Peter, what do you think about splitting the cpsection extensions (in
>> > /usr/share/sugar) into individual subpackages, to be selected by the
>> > Sugar Desktop group but not as direct dependencies of the Sugar
>> > packages? For F18+
>>
>> I've had a bit more of a look at this. Any thoughts on what should be
>> split out and what shouldn't. The language/keyboard obviously should
>> be split out. Are there ones we should most definitely have (hence not
>> split out)?
>
> I'm aiming to have this done at the sugar packaging level, before OLPC
> has releases their version. Of the 10 applets lets look at the
> breakdown:
>
> Language - agreed with
>
> Keyboard - agreed with
>
> Updater - patched out to use OLPC's version for microformat

The above 3 I agree with splitting out.

> Power - XO specific code
>
> About my Computer - XO specific code

It's not XO specific code except the serial number in Identity and
there's no reason that can't pull the details for the other machine
details if it's not an XO. The build is taken from the
/boot/olpc_build file and you can put what ever you like in there. It
also includes the license details which really shouldn't be removed.

> Modem Configuration - distro specific.

It's not, it should be using the configuration from ModemManager which
is used by all the major distros for 3G stuff.

> Date & time - is distro specific, doesn't work work right doesn't change
> system hence gnome is wrong.

Then it's likely a bug that should be fixed rather than just plain removed.

> Network - distro specific - to be able to add features without touching
> base sugar.

Again, uses NetworkManager like the rest of the Network code in Sugar.
All major distros use NetworkManager and there's a lot of other code
that needs to be changed all over the shell and toolkit to be able to
remove NetworkManager. In 0.94+ (maybe 0.96 and we back ported it for
0.94 in Fedora) it uses NM 0.9 and shares configuration with gnome.

Shouldn't the features be going upstream rather than just plain
forking the code? Also you'd need to patch other components of sugar
to change the network code.

> Frame - To be able to add features without touching base sugar.
>
> About Me - only one left.
>
> I'd say all of the applets. You now pick and choose the ones to include
> at image creation time, SoaS included. The same rpm that is offered by
> fedora should be the same as the one offered by OLPC.

I agree but in the case of SoaS there's likely only one I would want to remove.

> This should ease development of new features in this area with
> development not being tied to the release schedule of base sugar. One
> could develop an alternate to what is offered, prove it works then pass
> it upstream for inclusion in the next cycle, on a much smaller code
> base.

In some cases I agree, as documented above developing others, like
Network, require changes in other areas of the core sugar code so IMO
don't make much sense. I can still be convinced though, and of course
like everything if we make one decision today doesn't mean it can't
change down the road.

Peter