[Sugar-devel] Abandoned or orphaned activities
Tony Anderson
tony_anderson at usa.net
Mon Jan 21 02:12:01 EST 2019
While it is marvelous to see some actual attention to the Sugar
activities, this approach is the direct opposite of the logic behind the
move of the activities to gitHub. This is a return to the G1G1 model in
which individuals develop, contribute and own activities. There can be
no abandoned or orphaned activities in a community support model.
It was recognized by Walter and others that there were two factors which
made that ownership model unworkable. First, changes in Sugar software
support such as the move to GTK3 made common changes to all activities
necessary and, second, that many of the original contributors are no
longer involved with Sugar.
GitHub was touted as the way in which Sugar Labs as a community would
support Sugar and its library of activities. However, in practice
support for activities has become increasingly limited to a small number
of ones selected for inclusion in the 13.2 series of builds.
The Sugar activities library is made available to our users via ASLO.
Unfortunately, there are activities with new versions in gitHub which
have not been released to ASLO and thus are unknown to our users. There
is even confusion over which 'github'. It has to be kept clear that
developers can use any method they chose. What is controlled is the
repository on gitHub. Any changes outside of the Sugar Labs github are
invisible until they are submitted as a new version.
*
*
*Educational intent*
What I would like to see is a return to the founding philosophy of
Sugar. Everyone is welcome to contribute. When you get 10 lines of code
working, submit your activity. Sugar is designed to provide all the
software tools needed to develop activities in Sugar - no
cross-development, containers, or virtual environments. Instead of
requesting new contributors to demonstrate their technical proficiency
by putting their name on the XO icon in the Home View, identify some
real examples of changes that would improve Sugar. There are plenty
available:
Fix the icons on 'my settings' so they are visible instead of switching
to gnome by clicking on the big toe.
When you take a screenshot and switch to the Journal to give it a title,
you must use the Frame to return, not the Activity key.
The kids love the ability to customize their laptop with a background
picture. Unfortunately this often makes the icons in the Home View
invisible.
Add Jupyter Notebook as a built-in capability of Sugar (possibly as a
service of Browse).
Help solve problems with a long list of activities (such as the lack of
sound in Block Party).
Find a way for Browse to support the css FlexBox.
Stop using Pippy as a ceiling to our users learning to program in
Python. They can work up to 'Make your own Sugar Activities'. Start
with the Hello World activity. Explain GTK and its benefits. PyDebug
provides recipes for many common coding situations. Stop hiding the
Terminal and Log activities - try to encourage them to become favorites.
Soon we could see a new generation of user-programmers as we did in
Uruguay.
Along this theme, we should embrace the RPI and its compatriots as a way
to make embedded computing tangible. It would not be difficult to
connect such a device via the Ad Hoc network so that it could be used to
transfer a program written on an XO to the device and execute it with
the user seeing the results on LEDs (e.g. Sense Hat).
Tony
On 1/20/19 3:48 PM, Walter Bender wrote:
> I noticed Dimensions fell off the list. I will take that one on as I
> think it is of real value.
>
> -walter
>
> On Sun, Jan 20, 2019 at 8:44 AM James Cameron <quozl at laptop.org
> <mailto:quozl at laptop.org>> wrote:
>
> Thanks. So the list looks like;
>
> # Walter Bender
>
> * Music Blocks,
> * Turtle Blocks JS,
>
> # Rahul Bothra
>
> * CowBulls,
> * Flappy,
> * Cedit,
> * Polari,
>
> # James Cameron
>
> * Abacus,
> * Browse (master),
> * Browse (fedora 18 - webkit - v157.x),
> * Calculator,
> * Chart,
> * Chat,
> * Clock,
> * Develop,
> * Distance,
> * Finance,
> * Find Words,
> * Fototoon,
> * Fraction Bounce,
> * Gears,
> * GetBooks,
> * Help,
> * ImageViewer,
> * Implode,
> * Jukebox,
> * Labyrinth,
> * Letters,
> * Log,
> * Maze,
> * Measure,
> * Memorize,
> * Moon (master),
> * Moon (fedora 18 - gtk2 - v17.x),
> * MusicKeyboard (master),
> * MusicKeyboard (fedora 18 - csound - v8.x),
> * Paint,
> * Physics,
> * Pippy,
> * Poll,
> * Portfolio,
> * Read (master),
> * Read (fedora 18 - webkit - v118.x),
> * Record (master),
> * Record (fedora 18 - gstreamer - v10x),
> * SimpleEnglishWikipedia,
> * Speak,
> * StopWatch,
> * Story,
> * Terminal,
> * TurtleBlocks,
> * Words,
> * Write,
>
> On Fri, Jan 18, 2019 at 09:04:50AM -0500, Walter Bender wrote:
> > I am actively maintaining Music Blocks and Turtle Blocks JS.
> > I just haven't had the bandwidth to do much beyond that of late.
> That said, I
> > am happy to kibbutz on any of the activities which I used to
> maintain.
> >
> > On Fri, Jan 18, 2019 at 3:11 AM Rahul Bothra
> <[1]rrbothra at gmail.com <mailto:rrbothra at gmail.com>> wrote:
> >
> > *
> > I am maintaining CowBulls and Flappy.
> >
> > I can take up cedit and Polari
> >
> > On Fri, Jan 18, 2019 at 12:53 PM James Cameron
> <[2]quozl at laptop.org <mailto:quozl at laptop.org>> wrote:
> >
> > Once we had a list of abandoned activities, where the
> maintainer is
> > missing in action, not doing testing or releasing.
> >
> > Now, I propose the inverse; a list of activities with a
> maintainer
> > testing and releasing. It will be easier to maintain
> that list.
> >
> > For myself, each of the Fructose activities, each of the
> activities we
> > ship on OLPC OS. I know Walter is looking after Music
> Blocks. Lionel
> > is looking after Sugarizer. Are there any other
> developers who are
> > maintainers?
> >
> > --
> > James Cameron
> > [3]http://quozl.netrek.org/
> > _______________________________________________
> > Sugar-devel mailing list
> > [4]Sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org
> <mailto:Sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org>
> > [5]http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Sugar-devel mailing list
> > [6]Sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org
> <mailto:Sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org>
> > [7]http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
> >
> > --
> > Walter Bender
> > Sugar Labs
> > [8]http://www.sugarlabs.org
> > [9]
> >
> > References:
> >
> > [1] mailto:rrbothra at gmail.com <mailto:rrbothra at gmail.com>
> > [2] mailto:quozl at laptop.org <mailto:quozl at laptop.org>
> > [3] http://quozl.netrek.org/
> > [4] mailto:Sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org
> <mailto:Sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org>
> > [5] http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
> > [6] mailto:Sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org
> <mailto:Sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org>
> > [7] http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
> > [8] http://www.sugarlabs.org/
> > [9] http://www.sugarlabs.org/
>
> --
> James Cameron
> http://quozl.netrek.org/
> _______________________________________________
> Sugar-devel mailing list
> Sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org
> <mailto:Sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org>
> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
>
>
>
> --
> Walter Bender
> Sugar Labs
> http://www.sugarlabs.org
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Sugar-devel mailing list
> Sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org
> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
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