[Sugar-devel] FR: Feature for a.sl.o: global filter by Sugar version

[Gary Martin]

Hi Bastien,

On 26 Nov 2012, at 14:58, Bastien <bzg at laptop.org> wrote:

> Hi Gary,
> 
> thanks for your answer.
> 
> Gary Martin <garycmartin at googlemail.com> writes:
> 
>> Yes, http://activities.sugarlabs.org (ASLO) picks up the browser
>> client string from Browse that varies from Sugar release to Sugar
>> release, and shows the latest Activity versions for that release of
>> Sugar.  It does assume some steps are correctly taken when a
>> developer uploads a new version, they have to set which Sugar
>> versions their activity is compatible with, or an editor/reviewer
>> needs to be on the ball with re-testing the activity later. ASLO is
>> also not just for longterm Sugar developers to distribute activities,
>> but also to allow other third party developers to share their work as
>> well, so the quality/robustness of activity code/design can vary.
> 
> Yes.
> 
>> The area we most often get caught out in Sugar is that we don't have
>> good architecture variation support – XO hardware was x86 based (XO-1
>> XO 1.5) and more recent models are now ARM based (XO-1.75, XO-4), if
>> an activity developer decides to include binary code/libraries within
>> an activity, it is down to them to make sure they include support for
>> different architectures. This is why we try and encourage developers
>> to develop Python activities, built for the agreed Sugar platform
>> dependancies, as this avoids hardware architecture issues.
> 
> Yes.  This is a bit of a problem.  For example, I encouraged the Kiwix
> developer to make Kiwix available for Sugar, which they did, and I now
> have to ask them to port it to the ARM architecture (as they had too few
> feedback on Kiwix, I doubt porting Kiwix on ARM is a high priority task.)
> 
>> If you have found one, please do let me know the activity name,
>> version, the version of Sugar you tested, and what hardware type you
>> were trying to get it to run on and I'll take a look and update the
>> compatibility flags.
> 
> Using VirtualBox and Sugar on a Stick (Fedora-17-i686-Live-SoaS.iso),
> the Sugar File Manager does not launch.

Aha, OK. So my first guess would be that the SOAS image is probably missing some dependency shipped in an OLPC build (or in a deployments customised build) that this activity depends on. I've not used this particular activity before (I try to use Sugar with the tools we ship by default so have a better idea what our users have access to), but if you wanted to help debug a little further (it might be something _really_ simple), start the Log activity and look in the log file called:

	org.ceibaljam.SugarFileManager

Send me or copy/paste the log file if you wanted me to have a quick look.

Regards,
--Gary

> 
>> If you are downloading from a browser/device other than the Browse
>> running on the XO you finally want to install the activity on, you
>> can use the 'Advanced' search button on the main ASLO:
>> 
>> [cid]                                                 
> 
> Very useful, thanks!
> 
> -- 
> Bastien