[Sugar-devel] Towards ASLOv4 - Sugar Labs Activity Library v4

[Srevin Saju]

On November 19, 2020 11:58:04 AM GMT+03:00, James Cameron <quozl at laptop.org> wrote:
>On Thu, Nov 19, 2020 at 09:34:36AM +0300, Srevin Saju wrote:
>> On November 19, 2020 8:38:09 AM GMT+03:00, James Cameron <quozl at laptop.org> wrote:
>> >On Wed, Nov 18, 2020 at 10:50:58PM +0300, Srevin Saju wrote:
>> >> G'day again!
>> >> 
>> >> After 7 months of testing, iterations, bug reports, we have finally come up
>> >> with ASLOv4, Sugar Labs Activity Library v4.
>> >
>> >Thanks for working on this.
>> >
>> >> Thanks to Bernie for helping me out set it up!
>> >> 
>> >> So far, we have 3 activities on aslo-v4:
>> >> 
>> >> * Browse Activity
>> >> * JupyterLabs Activity
>> >> * Implode Activity
>> >
>> >That's reasonable.  There have been no new activities released
>> >recently.  You should update
>> >https://github.com/sugarlabs/sugar-docs/blob/master/src/contributing.md
>> >"Checklist - maintainer" with what should be done by whomever releases
>> >the next activity.  This is urgent.  I know Ibiam plans to work on
>> >activities soon, and who knows, maybe I might do some too.
>> >
>> >Meanwhile, if you wish to release another activity, please do so.
>> 
>> Sure!
>> 
>> >
>> >> Things to consider:
>> >> 
>> >> * What would be the new sub-domain name? (v4.activities.sugarlabs.org,
>> >> activities-4.sugarlabs.org, aslo4.sugarlabs.org)
>> >
>> >Use activities.sugarlabs.org, showing the old view for Sugar 0.112 and
>> >earlier, otherwise the new view.  It will require a bit of PHP porting
>> >to happen, but that's well documented upstream.
>> >
>> >While we wait for that porting to happen, a new name is not required.
>> 
>> I wonder if I would ever do the porting. I tried to, porting aslo-v1's source alone to php7 is reasonable. But, aslo-v1 directly dependa on an embedded dependency cakephp, which is quite hard work to port. So, until someone else ports it to php7, I don't know.
>
>Well, let's put that in perspective;
>
>1.  an upper bound on porting effort; we have 557 files and 161k lines
>of code with type .php in the aslo repository,
>
>2.  a lower bound on porting effort; using areltime on
>/src/www-sugarlabs/activities, only 61 files have been used in past
>day, a total of 29k lines of code, `find . -name '*.php' -amin -1440`
>
>3.  CakePHP is available for PHP 7.2, https://cakephp.org/ and they
>have docs on deprecated and removed features.

Yes, I have read the docs. Things have considerably changed from 1.3.4 (currently used in aslo-v1), and the current stable version is 4.1.
And the guide for porting it is easier, if we are moving from, for example, 1->2, or 2->3. But 1->4 is a huge jump. And even as I don't have a strong base in PHP, things become even more complicated. Probably I wouldn't work on it


>
>> Another way is to setup an nginx proxy_pass (also apache has it too), to redirect according to the user agent. Which seems reasonably simpler and easy. 
>
>Yes, I guess so, but until I see it I'm not sure.

I can show you this one, as I use it at many places. I have tested the Apache version, but not nginx. But I am sure it would work.

But this would require running a webserver outside also VM, or move aslo-v1 to a docker container running xenial, because xenial provides python 3.5 iirc, but aslo-v4 requires minimum python3.6. 
There has been a recent discussion on #sugar-systems about changing the method of deployment for aslo-v4, you might be interested


>
>> 
>> >
>> >> * Are there are any missing features to add, which have not been discussed
>> >> before? (https://github.com/sugarlabs/aslo-v4)
>> >
>> >I don't remember which have been discussed before, but what I'd like
>> >to see is;
>> >
>> >1.  show "Browse" when the search string is set to "bro"; currently it
>> >shows "Implode", possibly related to #34; a simple substring search
>> >could be used instead of a library,
>> 
>> Yes, I have marked it as "help-wanted", using a simple substring match, would not show any results if we have a small spelling error in the search. And kids tend to make spelling errors, most of them never get it right in the first place. If I tell a kid to get jupyter activity, he might hear it as "jupiter activity", so, searching for "jupiter", should yield " jupyter" along with search results right?
>
>Kids should learn to spell, and that's one way to force the issue.
>Algorithms that make things too easy cause kids not to learn as well.
>
>Still, I'd expect "bro" to match "Browse".
>

Ok, I will check into that. 
The search library indexes description too, maybe I should remove the description indexing and use titles and summary alone for cleaner search. Right?


>> >2.  provide a list of all activity bundles available; currently the
>> >default page is not suitable as a list,
>> 
>> Good idea, we need to shortlist the selected activities. Flathub has a list of selected apps. Similarly, according to popularity / demand, we can "feature" certain apps. 
>> 
>> >
>> >3.  support Sugar's microformat software upgrade feature in My
>> >Settings, so that a new release can cause automatic upgrade,
>> >
>> >4.  change Browse to show if an activity bundle, by name and version,
>> >is already installed, (this is what Android and iOS app stores can do,
>> >but will require integration between Browse, Sugar, and the web app),
>> >
>> >5.  change Browse default page to link to the web app, if it takes on
>> >a different name to activities.sugarlabs.org.
>> >
>> 
>> If the php7 porting doesn't happen, I will update sugar's source to use the new domain, i.e v4.activities.sugarlabs.org, et. al, and it supports everything mentioned in 3, 4 and 5. 4th one is blocked by the new subdomain name.
>> 
>> 
>> >> Interesting features
>> >> 
>> >> * Improved, accessible user interface
>> >> * Lightweight, static web pages
>> >> * Written in Python, Vanilla Javascript, HTML and CSS
>> >> * Support for Flatpak apps
>> >> 
>> >> For an extensive documentation and feature set: see
>> >> https://github.com/sugarlabs/aslo-v4
>> >> 
>> >> Right now, we are having a dynamic IP address (because of ambiguity in the
>> >> assigned slots), its accessible here: http://18.27.196.217,
>> >> https://people.sugarlabs.org/~srevinsaju/aslo
>> >
>> >To say "No info provided" on the JupyterLabs activity seems
>> >unecessary.  I suggest changing this to  
>> >
>> 
>> Ok! 
>> 
>> >> Looking forward to hearing from you. Hope, everything is going well, and
>> >> safe!
>> >> 
>> >> -- 
>> >> Srevin Saju
>> >> 
>> >
>
>p.s. don't know why we are off-list now.


Sorry, recently, I switched my mail client on Android, from GMail to K2Mail, and I am getting used to it. Good that we use quotes 🙂



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