Hi James,
Your book is a wonder and should be much more actively promoted. It is
one of the major contributions of Sugar to constructive learning.
I believe the use of git.sugarlabs.org and github are major steps
backwards from the original conception of Sugar activities as something
which users could develop and make available to the community. In the
first place, the activity bundle contains the source code that is
actually being executed. Second, there is a simple version system in
activity.info. The Developer Hub at activities.sugarlabs.org supplies an
adequate means to control maintenance activities (in the PR sense of
having someone monitor changes before releasing them for general use).
If one wanted to update an activity, say TuxMath, now the first step
would be to clone the repository not install the activity itself.
The ASLO site needs some work. Currently, the latest version is not
necessarily exposed (see Browse or TuxMath, for example). In some cases,
activities do not support Arm or use Hulahop and there is no way to
specify which versions of Sugar or its platforms are supported. The
availability of maintainers who know the PhP implementation of ASLO is
apparently dwindling. Perhaps Sugar Labs could undertake to re-implement
ASLO using Python (Django, flask, ...) or javascript to broaden the base
of potential maintainers.
However, dependence on github creates a duplicate repository for the
source code. With 400+ activities, there is no mechanism in github to
make the activities visible. Currently it may require searching 7
screens to find if an activity is there (unlike ASLO which has an
effective search capability).
I am sympathetic to the desire to acquaint our users with git and the
concept of version control. However, this approach limits the
opportunity to those who have internet access (probably a minority of
our users).
A more effective approach would be to determine how git could be
installed in Sugar ( a git activity?) so that it can be used. Your book
could then be used as a basis for helping our users learn to develop
activities using version-control. In this way version control can be
used locally by the developer prior to submitting an updated or new
activity to ASLO (which may well involve a visit to an internet cafe).
Tony
Tony
On 03/14/2017 03:39 AM, James Simmons wrote:
All,
I have been neglecting the manual /Make Your Own Sugar Activities!/
ever since I first wrote it. However, I did manage to make one needed
update in the laziest way possible. Since Sugar Labs has moved away
from git.sugarlabs.org <http://git.sugarlabs.org> in favor of GitHub
since I wrote the version control chapter I have added the following
note to that chapter:
*Important Note*: When this chapter was written Sugar Labs was
still using *git.sugarlabs.org <http://git.sugarlabs.org>* as its
code repository. While this still exists, the preferred repository
is now https://github.com/, using the *sugarlabs* organization.
This chapter is still a reasonable introduction to using Git, but
when you set up your project repository you should use the
excellent instructions provided on GitHub instead of the Gitorious
instructions provided here.
I hope this helps in some way.
James Simmons
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