Re: [sugar] [Proposal] .xot bundles, for translations
On Tue, Dec 2, 2008 at 8:33 PM, Martin Langhoff <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > What I meant to say is that all the good things we get from a bespoke > packaging format, we can get from rpm with a few conventions as to the > directories where things land. A couple of additional notes from a private subthread... ...there are a few ways to use rpm/yum for unprivileged users (alternative DB, fakeroot, relocatable pkgs...), and I think we can use them for this. In fact, we could even build a simplistic rpm installer in python that handles a subset of what rpm does (hopefully this is not needed, it'd detract from the idea quite a bit) One valid criticism to using rpm - from a Sugar perspective - is that Sugar won't want to become tied to Fedora/RH. There's a case for thinking through if we can actually use rpm the way we want on Debian and/or apt on Fedora. Both rpm and apt are available in old/buggy versions in the "other" family of distros. Using rpm or apt Sugar would getting a bit further away from Windows (does cygwin carry either?) - a bit less so on OSX (where the fink toolchain will probably work alright, specially with translation pkgs, which are by definition "noarch"). cheers, m -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- School Server Architect - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff ___ Sugar mailing list Sugar@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
Re: [sugar] [Proposal] .xot bundles, for translations
On Tue, Dec 2, 2008 at 7:34 PM, C. Scott Ananian <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Please re-read Sayamindu's original message. Thanks. I don't find anything too special there. Perhaps I wasn't clear earlier. What I meant to say is that all the good things we get from a bespoke packaging format, we can get from rpm with a few conventions as to the directories where things land. You can still do "local user edits" by either editing the files in-place, or editing a copy of the files, which is kept in a "local" directory that is in the 'path' for localization files. The pros and cons of both options can be argued separately, but both can work, and many additional tricks can be put into action too. So - I can't see anything that rpm can't handle, and I can't see an interesting upside to building a bespoke mechanism to deploy files. Perhaps it exists, and is really an overriding advantage that explains why we'd want to carry the significant additional long term burden (on us, and on everyone else) of a bespoke format. cheers, m -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- School Server Architect - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff ___ Sugar mailing list Sugar@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
Re: [sugar] [Proposal] .xot bundles, for translations
On Tue, Dec 2, 2008 at 4:26 PM, Martin Langhoff <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Tue, Dec 2, 2008 at 6:49 PM, C. Scott Ananian <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> Fedora does not have a standard solution either, so I'm not sure >> where you're going with this. We have to invent something. RPM is >> not obviously the right solution. > > So Fedora doesn't use rpm files for localization packages? What does > it use then? > > If I say 'yum search catalan' it returns a bunch of rpms - > kde-l10n-Catalan for example. What else could this mean? > > Debian does the same, AFAICS... Please re-read Sayamindu's original message. Thanks. --scott -- ( http://cscott.net/ ) ___ Sugar mailing list Sugar@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
Re: [sugar] [Proposal] .xot bundles, for translations
On Tue, Dec 2, 2008 at 6:49 PM, C. Scott Ananian <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Fedora does not have a standard solution either, so I'm not sure > where you're going with this. We have to invent something. RPM is > not obviously the right solution. So Fedora doesn't use rpm files for localization packages? What does it use then? If I say 'yum search catalan' it returns a bunch of rpms - kde-l10n-Catalan for example. What else could this mean? Debian does the same, AFAICS... cheers, m -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- School Server Architect - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff ___ Sugar mailing list Sugar@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
Re: [sugar] [Proposal] .xot bundles, for translations
On Tue, Dec 2, 2008 at 2:26 PM, Martin Langhoff <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Thu, Nov 13, 2008 at 6:58 PM, Sayamindu Dasgupta <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> I have been thinking of having a separate place in the filesystem for >> _new_ translations, and using RPM to manage the installation and >> upgradation of the new translations. > > What is the downside of RPMs? If users edit the localisation locally, > that is _fine_ and we can provide a mechanism to make an rpm easily > out of it. > > rpm has limited support for "user installable" packages that are meant > to be installed in your homedir. Maybe it can serve this purpose, even > within its limitations? > > If that doesn't work properly, maybe we install the rpm as root, but > invoking rpm with --noscripts, and perhaps auditing the pkg manifest > to check for anything with suid flags, etc. We could even build a dumb > rpm unpacker/installer but I doubt it is needed. > > A new bundle format makes us more incompatible with the world. > Example: someone builds a localisation for us, it won't work for > Fedora, and viceversa. Fedora does not have a standard solution either, so I'm not sure where you're going with this. We have to invent something. RPM is not obviously the right solution. --scott -- ( http://cscott.net/ ) ___ Sugar mailing list Sugar@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
Re: [sugar] [Proposal] .xot bundles, for translations
On Thu, Nov 13, 2008 at 6:58 PM, Sayamindu Dasgupta <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I have been thinking of having a separate place in the filesystem for > _new_ translations, and using RPM to manage the installation and > upgradation of the new translations. What is the downside of RPMs? If users edit the localisation locally, that is _fine_ and we can provide a mechanism to make an rpm easily out of it. rpm has limited support for "user installable" packages that are meant to be installed in your homedir. Maybe it can serve this purpose, even within its limitations? If that doesn't work properly, maybe we install the rpm as root, but invoking rpm with --noscripts, and perhaps auditing the pkg manifest to check for anything with suid flags, etc. We could even build a dumb rpm unpacker/installer but I doubt it is needed. A new bundle format makes us more incompatible with the world. Example: someone builds a localisation for us, it won't work for Fedora, and viceversa. Building bespoke sofware has a huge long term cost so when we do it, we better get a ton of value, something radically better and hopefully with immediate payoff. Installing a bunch of files in /home is not leading edge enough to justify this, IMHO. cheers, martin langhoff -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- School Server Architect - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff ___ Sugar mailing list Sugar@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
[sugar] [Proposal] .xot bundles, for translations
Hello, One of the things in my TODO for 9.1 is to have a better mechanism for language packs[1] in the XO. The primary goal of language packs is to decouple the process of translations from the process of OS release as much as possible, since as our software gets larger and more complicated, it will become more and more difficult for translators to keep up with the pace of development. Our current language pack mechanism handles the decoupling part, but two of its significant shortcomings include a) Overwriting of existing translation files (it may overwrite the original .mo file in certain cases) b) Difficulty for deployments (deployments have to manual start each XO, and run the pack installer script from a console) c) No auto update mechanism I have been thinking of having a separate place in the filesystem for _new_ translations, and using RPM to manage the installation and upgradation of the new translations. However, Scott suggested in a recent email conversation that deploying new translations through a bundle like format (used for activities and content right now) may make more sense as users themselves can use the Sugar control panel to download updated translations (as currently done with activities). I think this may be a better option than RPMs as a) It makes the new translations user modifiable (we can have a translate activity later on which would let users modify the translations) b) It would be pretty trivial to add support for a new .xot format in the customization key mechanism (just unzip them in /home/olpc) However, this would need XO specific changes in glibc, python, etoys and scratch (I think). I already have patches for glibc and python (based on patches from Ubuntu, which already uses a similar system, where they generate language packs out of their launchpad/rosetta based translations) Am I missing something out here ? If there are no problems with this proposal, I would like to start testing such a system in Joyride (with at least glibc and python patched) by the end of the month. Thanks, Sayamindu [1]http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Localization/LanguagePacks -- Sayamindu Dasgupta [http://sayamindu.randomink.org/ramblings] ___ Sugar mailing list Sugar@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
