[Sugar-devel] [IAEP] (Goals and Mission) with Microsoft in it?

[Tony Anderson]

The proposal is online at 
https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/organizations. Click on Sugar Labs. 
There are 9 accepted proposals, each with a pdf description.

The project intends to refresh ASLO using Django. Django is a 'fusion' 
framework involving Python plus templates using HTML5. It is currently 
maintained and in widespread use. The concern expressed when ASLO 
crashed was that it was based on an obsolete version of PhP and that 
there was no one in the community who was currently familiar with the 
implementation. Using Python and HTML5 in a well-known framework should 
make it easier to maintain.

The community has chosen to move the activity repository to 
github/sugarlabs. The apparent goal is to make the activities more 
maintainable by the community over the previous individual contributor 
model. This implies that the current 'Developer Hub' part of the site be 
replaced by a github process.

The connection between github and ASLO in this new model is that someone 
with appropriate permissions will review a submitted new activity 
version and publish it to ASLO (setup.py dist_xo and uploading to 
download.sugarlabs.org/activities).

The activity.info file could be expanded to include the 'metadata' now 
stored on ASLO (developer, summary, description, works with, and links 
to the activity repository on github/sugarlabs). This would facilitate 
maintenance of this information by the developer/maintainer by 
submitting changes to activity.info to git and, perhaps, eliminate 
dependency on a database.

One hope is that the project design will support easy replication of 
ASLO on school servers for deployments without access to the internet.

There may be impact on the software update procedure but at the moment 
that is also outside the scope of this project. Extending the project to 
School Network is also outside the scope.

The next step in the project with support from Sam Cantaro is to install 
a working model on Sunjammer as activities2.sugarlabs.org so that 
everyone can see it and provide input. The project will be opened on 
github/sugarlabs.

This phase of GSOC is always a little slow as the participants are in 
year-end exam cycles.

Tony


On 05/17/2017 01:47 PM, James Cameron wrote:
> On Tue, May 16, 2017 at 09:23:55PM -0400, Samuel Cantero wrote:
>>      Samuel Cantero wrote:
>>      > we're going to try to build a new ASLO in GSoC which must ease
>>      > activities management, for both image builders and developers.
>>
>>      Please also consider Sugar Network, which Sebastian knows about, and
>>      is used heavily, judging by the hit counts on the Sugar Labs servers.
>>
>> Can someone explain the relationship between ASLO and Sugar network?
> Nobody has answered your question, so I'll have a go.
>
> A derivative relationship; data flows from ASLO to Sugar Network.
>
> Any changes you make in ASLO that affect how the data is presented may
> have impact on Sugar Network.
>
> Also, don't forget that OLPC laptops and Sugar itself fetches data
> from ASLO, using the Software Update feature.  Look through the source
> for that; in the /sugar/ and /browse-activity/ repositories.
>
> You should also look at access logs on the server to make sure you
> understand what is happening.  Let me know what you find.
>
>> Pitifully we can't work in ASLO and Sugar network at the same time,
>> but we can take into account what is needed for interaction with
>> Sugar network. At least in design in the first stage.
> I've not seen any design yet.  Looking forward to it.
>
> ASLO works well at the moment now that the critical bugs are fixed;
> could you please estimate if the effort required to fix the remaining
> bugs?
>
> 	https://github.com/sugarlabs/aslo/issues
>
> The final accepted proposal is still paywalled; so anything Jatin has
> said is opaque and non-transparent.  Is Jatin subscribed here yet?
> Can the proposal be posted or is there some reason for secrecy?
>
> 	https://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Summer_of_Code/2017
>
> There was a copy posted on 2nd April on sugar-devel@ ... but I don't
> know if that version is current ... which mentions developing a new
> ASLO ...
>
> Developing a new ASLO has been tried before, by Sam Parkinson, and it
> did not get enough traction, and was shut down; we've only just
> finished removed the changes from Sugar.  It was also a git based
> backend.  After that experience, I really don't think we need another
> ASLO.
>
> Please, maintain the existing ASLO first, as a priority.
>
> I see no reason to host ASLO on GitHub or bind it too closely to that
> social network.
>
> Activity release is not a complicated process; we lack maintainers,
> not tools.
>
> ASLO is a fairly straightforward web application; and the languages
> used are on the knowledge prerequisites for the GSoC task, and easy to
> pick up.
>