[Sugar-devel] [NETWORK] Sugar Network 0.9 Beta release

[Aleksey Lim]

== General ==

This is another Beta cycle release of the Sugar Network.
It brings fixes for issues found during 0.8 testing.

The correspondig release of downstream deployment distribition
is Hexoquinasa BETA3, found more information on SL Peru wiki
http://pe.sugarlabs.org/go/Hexoquinasa/v1.0


== Sugar Network Node ==

* Remove timestamp duplicates in node statistics API call

  http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Platform_Team/Sugar_Network/API#Node_statistics

* Keep presolved dependency trees separately by system architecture

  to let packagekit-backend-presolve working not only on X86
  http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Platform_Team/packagekit-backend-presolve#Repositories

* Populate Sugar Network activity properties directly from .xo bundles.

  In previous version, strings like activity name, title, etc.
  were importing from the Activity Library, only few of them were
  properly localized. Right now, while importing activity updates from
  Activity Library, Sugar Network reads .xo files and reuse bundled
  localization for the following activity.info fields:

  - name
  - summary
  - description

* Fix indexing activity authors property while importing from
  the Activity Library.

  In previous versions, query API calls like

    http://node.sugarlabs.org/context?query=author:Peter

  were returning empty results because Sugar Network content
  was not properly indexed by authors. Right now it should work
  as assumed.

* Index Activity Library content by authors nicknames.

  Since Sugar Network has only one user friendly identifier, User Name
  (to simplify usage workflow), Sugar Network was indexing Activity
  Library updates only by authors full name. For now, nicknames are
  also involved. So, queries like the following will work:

    http://node.sugarlabs.org/context?query=author:mulawa


== Sugar Network cient ==

* While cloning activity implementations without dependencies,

  fetch original activity metadata from the server.
  http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Platform_Team/Sugar_Network/API#PUT_clone

* Add --accept-language client parameter to override system locale.

  sugar-network-client application while sending API calls
  was using only system locale to set HTT Accept-Language header.
  For now, it is also possible to specify particular languages.


== Sugar Shell plugin ==

* Install non Sugar Network based .xo only once.

  The previous code was installing Journal'ed .xo endlessly.


== Web UI ==

Bugfixes:

* Offline author shows name instead of guid
* Context browser returns correctly to last page
* Remove unimplemented followers, solutions, comments fields
* Fix layout in context resources view to avoid overflow
 
User Interface improvements:

* Object browsers switched to show 3 object per page
* Polish translations to make language simpler
* Redirect to newly created project on creation
* Delete artifacts


== Contributor Hub ==

* Make Fail reports visible for anonymous Web users.

  The original idea was not overcrowding top UI and "hide" 
  Fail reports link on Activity authors page. But since Web
  authentication is not yet implemented, this link was moved
  to the top Activity page like:

    http://network.sugarlabs.org/hub/?activities&org.laptop.physics

* Set layers globally from settings.

  The idea of Sugar Network layers is about slicing content to make
  usage scenarios more flexible. For example, there is a layer named
  "pilot". It is being used to collect activities and activity versions
  passed QA procedures, i.e., ready to be used by people in the field.
  In new Contributor Hub version, it is possible to set currently
  visible layers from the setting dialog ("gear" button int the
  top-right corner):

    http://network.sugarlabs.org/hub/?activities


== Try the release ==

Follow the "Try it" wiki page:

    http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_Network#Try_it

See Sugar Network usage tutorial created by Thomas C Gilliard:

    http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_Network/Tutorial


== Credits ==

* People in the field for exposing the need in such kind projects and
  interest in testing.

* World wide community members who donated funds to make full time
  working possible.

* People on wiki, mailing lists, and, IRC channels who are helping in
  development process.