[Sugar-devel] Abandoned or orphaned activities
Tony Anderson
tony_anderson at usa.net
Mon Jan 21 04:44:54 EST 2019
Hi, James
This is a disagreement with Walter from day one. ASLO is a means to
maintain the library of Sugar activities in use for nearly a decade.
Introducing gitHub created an obstacle for our users as contributors.
Another disagreement I have with Walter is the concept of replacing
ASLO. This has been tried more than once without meeting the test of
providing something better. The reasns I mentioned were the ones Walter
offered in justification of the change.
Gitorious was not a part of the conversation because it was never part
of the ASLO process. You may remember my faux pas in trying to assist in
the transition to gitHub. As I see the process proposed by Walter, each
activity on ASLO, should have a corresponding repository on Sugar Labs
gitHub. Contributors should submit new versions of activities as Pull
Requests. These submissions should be reviewed and tested by Sugar users
before release. When released, the new versions should be put on ASLO
for use by our community. There is nothing in this process that requires
(or should require) a contributor to use gitHub, gitorious or, indeed,
any version control system. The version control comes through the
submission process. Certainly, no developer should develop on SugarLabs
github. It should only see Pull Requests reflecting new versions.
Naturally this process is essentially different from that which applies
to Sugar development.
Tony
On 1/21/19 10:44 AM, James Cameron wrote:
> Fascinating, I never thought the move to GitHub was ever going to
> achieve all that. It was to enable a shutdown of the unmaintained
> gitorious instance at git.sugarlabs.org. Which still hasn't happened
> because it is still useful, in turn because this community hasn't the
> time to do the necessary leg work to finish the move to GitHub.
>
> In short, it has nothing to do with the tools, and everything to do
> with contributors.
>
> I'll continue to focus on the activities I've got on my list. That
> doesn't mean I won't help with the other activities, but I won't
> necessarily spend as much time with the others.
>
> On Mon, Jan 21, 2019 at 09:12:01AM +0200, Tony Anderson wrote:
>> 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 <[1]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][2]
>> 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][3]
>> 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][4]http://quozl.netrek.org/
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > Sugar-devel mailing list
>> > [4][5]Sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org
>> > [5][6]http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > Sugar-devel mailing list
>> > [6][7]Sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org
>> > [7][8]http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
>> >
>> > --
>> > Walter Bender
>> > Sugar Labs
>> > [8][9]http://www.sugarlabs.org
>> > [9]
>> >
>> > References:
>> >
>> > [1] mailto:[10]rrbothra at gmail.com
>> > [2] mailto:[11]quozl at laptop.org
>> > [3] [12]http://quozl.netrek.org/
>> > [4] mailto:[13]Sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org
>> > [5] [14]http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
>> > [6] mailto:[15]Sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org
>> > [7] [16]http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
>> > [8] [17]http://www.sugarlabs.org/
>> > [9] [18]http://www.sugarlabs.org/
>>
>> --
>> James Cameron
>> [19]http://quozl.netrek.org/
>> _______________________________________________
>> Sugar-devel mailing list
>> [20]Sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org
>> [21]http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
>>
>> --
>> Walter Bender
>> Sugar Labs
>> [22]http://www.sugarlabs.org
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Sugar-devel mailing list
>> [23]Sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org
>> [24]http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
>>
>> References:
>>
>> [1] mailto:quozl at laptop.org
>> [2] mailto:rrbothra at gmail.com
>> [3] mailto:quozl at laptop.org
>> [4] http://quozl.netrek.org/
>> [5] mailto:Sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org
>> [6] http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
>> [7] mailto:Sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org
>> [8] http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
>> [9] http://www.sugarlabs.org/
>> [10] mailto:rrbothra at gmail.com
>> [11] mailto:quozl at laptop.org
>> [12] http://quozl.netrek.org/
>> [13] mailto:Sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org
>> [14] http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
>> [15] mailto:Sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org
>> [16] http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
>> [17] http://www.sugarlabs.org/
>> [18] http://www.sugarlabs.org/
>> [19] http://quozl.netrek.org/
>> [20] mailto:Sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org
>> [21] http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
>> [22] http://www.sugarlabs.org/
>> [23] mailto:Sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org
>> [24] http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
>> _______________________________________________
>> Sugar-devel mailing list
>> Sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org
>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
>
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