[Sugar-devel] Minor update to Make Your Own Sugar Activities!

Gonzalo Odiard godiard at gmail.com
Thu Mar 16 07:33:14 EDT 2017


Have you tried Develop activity?

http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addon/4058

On Thu, Mar 16, 2017 at 12:32 AM, Tony Anderson <tony_anderson at usa.net>
wrote:

> James,
>
> Sugar now provides in the Journal a link to the Documents directory. This,
> of course, has the problem that the display does not show subdirectories. I
> have toyed with the idea of having the tutorials use Sugar Commander and
> the excellent gedit activity instead of the shell and nano. However, at the
> end I believe that the Terminal activity is simple to use and that learners
> should become familiar with the file system through shell commands. The
> nano editor is easy to use.
>
> I think that a second round of tutorials introducing Sugar Commander,
> gedit, and git could be introduced for learners already familiar with shell
> commands and nano.
>
> Tony
>
>
> On 03/15/2017 10:49 PM, James Simmons wrote:
>
> Tony,
>
> I own an XO laptop from the first Give One Get One promotion, so I know
> what it can do. I've used the Terminal Activity and I wrote the Sugar
> Commander Activity because I thought that the original design of Sugar,
> which made your thumb drive look like the Journal, was not such a hot idea.
> In my opinion files and directories should look like files and directories
> and the Journal should look like the Journal. I know that some of the newer
> XO's can switch to a GNOME desktop.
>
> I never tried developing Activities on an XO because I never had to. It is
> definitely easier to do things the way I do it, and for someone living in
> the U.S. with reliable internet it's pretty cheap. I agree that this is not
> the case for all the students, or even most of them. It's a case of "to
> those who have, more shall be given."
>
> I had the same situation when I wrote *E-Book Enlightenment*. Free
> e-books in English are plentiful, other languages not so much. I had to
> write chapters on making e-books, figuring out what is in the public
> domain, photographing book pages, building a device to hold books in place
> for being photographed, doing optical character recognition, donating books
> to PG and archive.org, etc.
>
> Maybe MYOSA needs a chapter on using the XO for developing applications,
> installing Git and using it locally, etc. My own XO has been in a drawer
> for a couple of years.
>
> James Simmons
>
>
> On Wed, Mar 15, 2017 at 12:46 AM, Tony Anderson <tony_anderson at usa.net>
> wrote:
>
>> Hi, James
>>
>> If you go to activities.sugarlabs.org, you can register via the register
>> link at the top right. This is not registration for Sugarlabs but for ASLO.
>>
>> As I understand the github repository, access with the ability to commit
>> changes is closely held. The enables proposed changes to be vetted before a
>> commit.
>> However, the web page has a sign in link which gives limited access
>> (create pull requests and comment on them, for example). That same two-step
>> process is used for ASLO. The developer submits the change which puts it
>> into a sandbox pending review.
>>
>> Actually Sugar has files, directories and a command shell (Terminal
>> activity). It is relatively easy to switch activities via the Frame. I say
>> this from several years of experience developing on the XO (easier than
>> using usb flash keys to move code to the XO to test). The fact that Browse
>> does not support flex and the unique XO screen makes testing on an XO
>> essential if that is the target.
>>
>> The process of making changes via github to the Sugar core is certainly
>> reasonable. However, nothing in this procedure interferes with a developer
>> modifying and testing a change on an installed Sugar independently of the
>> internet. Access to the internet being needed only to submit the change.
>>
>> The issue is not to use Sugar for everything, it is to use the available
>> computer for everything (XO). In general, the XO is the first computer our
>> users have used and, aside from an Android device, the only computer
>> available. While used desktops and laptops are available, the $100+ funds
>> are not available.
>>
>> The 'current setup' you mention depends on ready access to the internet,
>> something not available for at least 2/3 of our users. It is a strength of
>> Sugar that the source code is immediately available to the user without
>> need of a repository (except access to activities not installed - a need
>> supplied by a schoolserver). This allows learners to get into programming
>> in a meaningful way using only what is installed on the XO.
>>
>> Tony
>>
>>
>> On 03/14/2017 11:25 PM, James Simmons wrote:
>>
>> All,
>>
>> I only meant to make the manual actually tell where we currently put our
>> code repositories, without rewriting the whole chapter. (I had hoped that a
>> Google Code-In mentee might do that, but it didn't happen). The one piece
>> of information that is still lacking is how to have your account added to
>> the sugarlabs organization. That happened so long ago that I forgot how it
>> happened. If someone could remind me I'll add that information to the note.
>>
>> I haven't done any Sugar development in years but I do program computers
>> for a living and I use Git in my day job.
>>
>> Sugar has some good Activities to teach programming, but I don't think it
>> is a great Activity development platform. For that you really need files
>> and directories and a command shell, the ability to run Sugar as more than
>> one user at a time, etc.
>>
>> I understand the desire to use Sugar for everything, but I think it would
>> always get in the way. You wouldn't expect to be able to develop an iphone
>> app on an iphone, or at least I wouldn't.
>>
>> If I wanted to teach Activity development to children I'd get some
>> reconditioned desktop computers and install Fedora and Sugar on them. I
>> have used nothing but reconditioned computers myself for years. It is
>> amazing to me what you can get reconditioned on Amazon and elsewhere for
>> around a hundred bucks. This is basically my price range for a "new"
>> computer, and for that I can get a Lenovo or other quality brand with more
>> than adequate disk space and memory. These computers are built for use in
>> offices and have many years of life left in them. In Fedora you can run
>> Sugar as a desktop environment as well as in a window. You can hook them up
>> to a TV or a projector (something I remember many people wanted to do with
>> the XO).
>>
>> I don't see ASLO being separate from Git as a problem. I think of it like
>> the production environment at work. If it's good enough to use it goes on
>> ASLO. If not, it stays in Git, but I might push my code to the central
>> repository so others could fool around with it.
>>
>> Part of teach a child programming should be teaching him good work
>> habits, and I think our current setup promotes that.
>>
>> James Simmons
>>
>> On Tue, Mar 14, 2017 at 9:28 AM, Laura Vargas < <laura at somosazucar.org>
>> laura at somosazucar.org> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> 2017-03-14 7:13 GMT-05:00 Walter Bender < <walter.bender at gmail.com>
>>> walter.bender at gmail.com>:
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Tue, Mar 14, 2017 at 12:45 AM, Tony Anderson <
>>>> <tony_anderson at usa.net>tony_anderson at usa.net> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On 03/14/2017 12:03 PM, Alex Perez wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> I would think ASLO could simply be made to inspect the contents of an
>>>>> activity, upon upload, (since it’s just a zip file), and look for the
>>>>> necessary string within activity.info, such that it could be
>>>>> displayed under a “details” section of an Activity, within ASLO.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> What I propose is that the ASLO page have a link to the github
>>>>> repository. See the attached screenshot which shows a link to home page. I
>>>>> would see this link being added here.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> +1. But that can be done if (1) we include the repo path in the info
>>>> file and (2) do the work on ALSO to display it (I think alsroot was looking
>>>> into this).
>>>>
>>>
>>> +1 to add the repository link field on ASLO.
>>>
>>> This is an example where we all agree that something needs to be done.
>>>
>>> Now, how do you propose we get it done?
>>>
>>>
>>>> You proposal has no bearing on where the repo is hosted, as it should
>>>> not.
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Tony
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Sugar-devel mailing list
>>>>> Sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org
>>>>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Walter Bender
>>>> Sugar Labs
>>>> <http://www.sugarlabs.org>http://www.sugarlabs.org
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Sugar-devel mailing list
>>>> Sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org
>>>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Laura V.
>>> * I&D SomosAZUCAR.Org*
>>>
>>> “No paradox, no progress.”
>>> ~ Niels Bohr
>>>
>>> Happy Learning!
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Sugar-devel mailing list
>>> Sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org
>>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>
>
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