[Sugar-devel] Meeting #2 of the project Setting up activity server.

[Tony Anderson]

If you believe it is trash, remove it. It is trash only in that there 
was no follow-up. You and Walter seem to want everything in one bucket. 
In the past few days I have spent a lot of time on github using search 
to find out if there is a repository for an activity. So, if you feel it 
is correct, delete the sugaractivities trash.

The list of tries to clean up ASLO shows the problem. Each attempt 
started by trashing ASLO and beginning again. What is needed is to 
leverage what we have. I believe the first step is to make an up-to-date 
inventory of the Sugar activities and their status. That is my current 
focus.

Never is a long time.

"Rather than stuff
around with ASLO, we really need activity maintainers who will release
new activity versions."

Agreed.

Version numbers are treated in Sugar as text, so you are certainly 
correct. An activity version could be 'wonderful'.
However, the bundle browse-157.3.xo shows the version number. We could 
have myactivity-wonderful.xo.

This number by convention should be an integer incremented by a new 
release. This immediately informs the user that if the installed 
activity (List View) version number is less than the current version 
number on ASLO, there is a possible update. The original guidelines were 
to increment version numbers by 1.

Bundle deletion should never be done automatically. It requires a 
thoughtful decision. The decision to block Hello World illustrates our 
fundamental problem. We choose to 'deprecate' since it means the problem 
is no longer a problem and no further action is needed. Blocking Hello 
World doesn't seem much simpler than building a bundle by setup.py from 
the repository (after updating the version number to 7) and then 
installing in on ASLO. I know you are capable of both steps. Having a 
simple activity that users can refer to when attempting to build their 
own activity should be an essential part of our educational objective. 
Blocking does serve the purpose of eliminating the problem.

Tony

On Monday, 07 May, 2018 09:49 AM, James Cameron wrote:
> No surprise that this meeting didn't discuss an activity server or
> WikiPort, because (a) the questions were about a private mail (there
> was no link), and (b) the new term WikiPort is Vipul's name for the
> project.
>
> I interpret https://github.com/sugar-activities as trash left lying
> around by a previous contributor.  It ruins code and text searches on
> GitHub, because there are so many matches in the wrong place.  I've
> had two contributors misidentify repositories because of it.
>
> While it would be nice to clean up ASLO, this is obviously never going
> to happen, because we've had so many people try already, then fail.
> ASLOv2, then ASLOv3, and we're still on ASLOv1.  I've fixed a few
> things, 'cause I can code in PHP.  It's not hard.  Rather than stuff
> around with ASLO, we really need activity maintainers who will release
> new activity versions.
>
> You're wrong about the version numbers.  Sugar supports version
> numbers with any number of periods separated by numbers.  Our
> specification of version number is
> https://developer.sugarlabs.org/sugar3/sugar3.bundle.bundleversion.html
>
> (For others, "real" is FORTRAN for floating point.  Both Tony and I
> used Fortran.)
>
> Yes, automatic bundle deletion should be done.  Any volunteers to do
> it?  Thought not.  https://github.com/sugarlabs/browse-activity/issues/81
>
> On Mon, May 07, 2018 at 09:20:08AM +0800, Tony Anderson wrote:
>> I read the log and didn't see any discussion of either an activity server or a
>> WikiPort. Most of the discussion seems to focus on 'activity.info'.
>>
>> I interpret [1]https://github.com/sugar-activities as an attempt to provide a
>> separate place for Sugar activity repositories based on download.sugarlabs.org/
>> activities. The number of activities mentioned is consistent with the current
>> content of ASLO. (see [2]http://activities.sugarlabs.org/activities/)
>>
>> A simple python script can process the activity.info in activity bundles very
>> quickly. Simply download every activity bundle and then use import zipfile to
>> read the activity.info file and check it for whatever is interesting. I
>> generally use ls -1 *.xo > list to create a file. The python script can easily
>> form a list of activities from this file.
>>
>> Our primary goal must be to provide information and support for our users and
>> prospective users. There is no reason for a user ever to know that there is an
>> activity.info file or indeed an Activities folder. The original design provides
>> the information needed for Sugar to register and execute the activity within
>> the activity.py framework. In this spirit, the repository link should join the
>> website link on ASLO where it is visible to the user.
>>
>> In the spirit of view source, wouldn't it be helpful to have documentation
>> giving the  user a map of Sugar and the role of the various modules? This could
>> start with the information in activity.py. (/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/
>> sugar3/activity/activity.py). This could lead in to James Simmons description
>> of how to make a Sugar activity. The Hello World activity could be used as
>> intended - as the simplest example. The problem with the wiki pages is not the
>> mark up method but the organization and content.
>>
>> Our priority task is to clean up ASLO. The activity version in ASLO needs to be
>> released from the github repository with a meaningful version number (an
>> integer not a real number). The activities need to be tested to see that they
>> work in the Ubuntu 18.04 environment as well as in 13.2.9. We need to have a
>> clear picture of the activities which are not working and the cause. It may be
>> necessary to have different versions for Ubuntu and for 13.2.9. As well there
>> may have to be different versions for the Intel processors and the Arm
>> processors. ASLO needs to be modified to accommodate that need. There are
>> activities which probably should be dropped. The Java activity works well but
>> is not an activity. It installs Java - a one-time execution.
>>
>> We also need to remember that the XO has very limited storage. It is essential
>> that the installed activity not be git enabled. Currently the Browse activity
>> not only downloads and installs an activity, it leaves a copy of the bundle in
>> the Journal. This doubles the storage cost of an activity. It burdens our user
>> with the need to switch to the Journal and erase the bundle. As developers we
>> need to ask what is the effect a proposed change have on the size of the
>> installed activity. Currently 13.2.9 installed on an XO-1 or on a 2GB XO-1.5
>> gives the user about 300MB of available storage.
>>
>> Tony
>>
>> On Monday, 07 May, 2018 02:42 AM, Vipul Gupta wrote:
>>
>>      Hi folks,
>>
>>      We are just done with our second meeting, of the project Setting up the
>>      activity server and WikiPort. Do refer to the logs for the updates, all
>>      comments and suggestions are appreciated. The blog with the updates is
>>      going to be uploaded soon on my blog Mixster.
>>       
>>      Logs are here - [3]http://meeting.sugarlabs.org/sugar-meeting/meetings/
>>      2018-05-06T16:43:50
>>      Tracker (updated) - [4]https://docs.google.com/document/d/
>>      1VdzjA-DnEBh0ntHY17ktXlp7c2pIofq8458gSCTwiSM/edit?usp=sharing
>>
>>      Happy Contributing !!
>>
>>      Cordially,
>>      Vipul Gupta
>>      [5]Mixster | [6]Github
>>
>>     
>>
>>      _______________________________________________
>>      Sugar-devel mailing list
>>      [7]Sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org
>>      [8]http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
>>
>> References:
>>
>> [1] https://github.com/sugar-activities
>> [2] http://activities.sugarlabs.org/activities/
>> [3] http://meeting.sugarlabs.org/sugar-meeting/meetings/2018-05-06T16:43:50
>> [4] https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VdzjA-DnEBh0ntHY17ktXlp7c2pIofq8458gSCTwiSM/edit?usp=sharing
>> [5] https://mixstersite.wordpress.com/
>> [6] https://github.com/vipulgupta2048
>> [7] mailto:Sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org
>> [8] http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
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