Difference between revisions of "Activity Team"

Latest revision as of 22:41, 6 March 2018

Team Home · Join · Contacts · Resources · FAQ · Roadmap · To Do · Meetings

Mission

The Activity Team develops and maintains many of the activities available for Sugar. We also encourage independent developers to write activities, and we support them in their efforts. Our goal is to ensure that Sugar provides a complete set of high quality educational, collaborative, constructivist activities.

Our responsibilities

Develop and maintain the ecosystem of Sugar activities.
Recruit and mentor activity developers from the community.
Collect, document and organize new activity and activity feature ideas from the Education Team, deployments and community.
Work with the Development Team and the Infrastructure Team to ensure activity developers are well supported.
Gather feedback with the Deployment Team about how Sugar activities are doing in the field.

Tips for Activity Developers

Ask your 'newbie' question on-line

Join IRC channel #sugar (e.g. via web client) and ask your question about activity, or sugar core, development process. Also browse chat logs.

Move an activity

We need help moving activities over to Sugar Labs from GitHub servers. This is a great way to get started helping out the Activity Team. See Activity Team/How to migrate from Gitorious for instructions, and Activity Team/Activity Status for the list of activities that need to be moved.

While moving activities, it would be great to check that the .pot files are up to date and the MANIFEST is correct. This will really help out the distro packagers.

Set up Sugar Labs services

Upload a xo bundle to activities.sugarlabs.org. Be sure to include a couple of screenshots of your activity in action.
If your activity is part of Fructose, upload a .tar.bz2 to download.sugarlabs.org. Request a shell account from the Infrastructure Team if you don't have one already.
Update the OLPC wiki page for the Activity, noting the migration. Use the Migrated to sl.o template.
Change sugar-jhbuild to point to the new repository if this activity was included in sugar-jhbuild (enter a ticket in http://dev.sugarlabs.org if you have no access).
Ask an Activity Team Coordinator to create a Trac component for your activity.

Cross-platform compatibility

As Sugar is integrated into more distros and the hardware base expands, it is important to keep Activity developers informed of any issues they need be aware of. For example, when Sugar was only expected to run on the XO-1 laptop, it was safe to assume that the display was always 1200x900.

The Compatibility Tips page is a place to accumulate tips.

Migrating from GTK2 to GTK3

The Sugar platform is migrating from GTK2 to GTK3 to stay relevant with upstream changes and benefit from their efforts. Sugar 0.96 (available in OLPC 12.1 development builds) includes support for a transition period, where both GTK2 and GTK3 activities can coexists, but new Sugar features will only be added to the GTK3 toolkit (e.g., improvements in touchscreen support). Have a read through the migration notes, and the GTK3 Python tutorials to get a feel for how things need to be changed. New activities should be developed with GTK3, unless you need to support an existing deployment today using an older build.

Modify Activities

A guide has been written describing how to make simple modifications to popular Sugar activities. Examples include adding sounds to TamTam, blocks to TurtleArt, buttons to Calculate, etc.

Activity Team/Modifying an Activity

Remote control your XO

Remote control your XO from your development machine can be handy while developing an activity.

Internationalization

We use gettext to internationalize activities. The basic steps are:

In your Python code:

from gettext import gettext as _

Hence forth, encapsulate strings that you want translated in _():

_('string to be translated')

Run setup.py to generate a POT file for your project. This file will contain a reference to all of the encapsulated strings.

From here, you need to:

git add, commit, and push the POT file to git
request that your project be added to the pootle server (by filing a task to the localization component on bugs.sugarlabs.org)
add pootle as a committer to your project on gitorious

Once translations are committed to your project:

do a git pull to get a local copy of the .po files
run setup.py fix_manifest to create the .mo files used at run time

Details can be found on the Translation Team/i18n Best Practices page.

General overview of git

Read the brief overview below but then start with our

git tutorial.

glossary

VCS: Version Control System — keeps track of changes to a set of files.
git: the distributed VCS used by Sugar Labs
commit: set of changes to files tracked by a VCS, accompanied by metadata (author, description, etc.)
diff/patch: (usually textual) representation of changes. These are also the names of specific tools used to create/apply these representations of changes.
repository: storage place for commits, usually of a certain piece of software
gitorious: software for hosting git repositories, including a web interface for administration
git.sugarlabs.org: server hosted by Sugar Labs running gitorious
GitHub: a web-based hosting service Git repository. Sugar Labs is migrating projects to this service.

Setup

(Once per machine you're working on)

git clone git://github.com/whatever/mainline.git whatever

Regular usage

cd whatever

[hack away and test your changes]

git diff

[review your changes, go back to hacking if you notice a mistake]

git status
git add NameOfNewFile # if you created any file you want included
git commit -a

[describe your changes - by convention the first line is a summary and the remaining lines are long description] [start again at hacking if you're offline]

git log origin/master..master # shows you all commits not pushed yet
git push # if/once you are online

Git offers a lot more commands and features that can make your life easier, but it's best to start off small and use only those mentioned above. It's very easy to get confused if you're unfamiliar with git.

Even if you use the more advanced features, git does a pretty good job at allowing you to recover from your mistakes. So if you ever mess up and don't know how to fix it yourself, please stop (at least for me that's usually the hardest part ;) ), try to recollect the exact sequence of actions (e.g., from shell history) and ask for help.

Once you have migrated your project, you may have some more detailed questions regarding how Sugar Labs uses git, particularly in regard to patch management.

Additional background on GitHub

An alternate, cgit.sugarlabs.org web interface to git.sugarlabs.orgrg]

James Simmons' book "Make Your Own Sugar Activities!" chapter 11 explains Git for activity developers, it is highly recommended for intermediate and advanced users
Anish Mangal explains the git workflow on the Sugar development mailing list

git top links: 2010-1
Git Community Book
John Wiegley has written an overview of git: Git from the bottom up
Charles Duran from Harvard has written a lovely overview of git at Understanding Git Conceptually
GNOME maintains a list of references to git for mortals
Learn Git One Commit at a Time
Pro Git by Scott Chacon,
Gitcasts.
25 Git Tips

Maintainers

How to become a Maintainer

Please see File:How to become a maintainer.pdf for an overview of the Activity maintenance process.

What to do if a maintainer is absent

Read the Policy for non-responsive maintainers for more details.

Testers

Please see the Testing/Activity Test Table for tester information.

Background information

Sugar Activities

There is an Activities page where we highlight Sugar activities in the wiki. (We need to discuss how best to manage the content of this page as well as how to manage the activity-specific sub-pages.)

Sugar Human Interface Guidelines

The Sugar Human Interface Guidelines content has also been migrated to Sugar Labs. This guide is a critical resource when designing activities.

An Activity HIG discussion

Sugar Almanac

The Sugar Almanac content has been migrated to Sugar Labs. It's a great, quick reference when building python Activities.

activities.sugarlabs.org

The Sugar Activity Library is our user-facing portal for Sugar activities. The site uses the back-end Mozilla built for Firefox and Thunderbird extensions at addons.mozilla.org, called Remora. To help out, check out Activity Library.

sugar-widgets library

See Development Team/sugar-port.

sugar-sprites library

See Activity Team/Sugar-sprites

Misc.

Mime types and file suffixes

You can associate your activity with mime types by including a mime_types entry in the activity/activity.info file; e.g.,

mime_types = text/plain;text/x-python;text/x-logo;text/x-svg;application/xml;text/html;text/xml;image/svg+xml

You can associate your activity with a file suffix by including a mimetypes.xml file in your activity subdirectory:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<mime-info xmlns="http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/shared-mime-info">
   <mime-type type="application/x-turtle-art">
      <comment xml:lang="en">Turtle Art</comment>
      <glob pattern="*.ta"/>
   </mime-type>
</mime-info>

Note: You cannot just copy your activity into the ~/Activities directory. You have to install it as a .xo bundle or using 'setup.py install' (note that the latter is tricky as the command might get your paths messed up). This installation step will create a file --> ~/.local/share/mime/packages/<your-bundle_id>.xml

If your activity does not register any mimetype, then it won't matter.

If your activity was already properly installed (with sugar-install-bundle), then copying new source into Activities will not be affected by this problem unless the new source registers a new mimetype that the old source did not.

Activity Team users on activities.sugarlabs.org

Fake emails to identify users:

activity.team@sugarlabs.org activities that are supported by Activity Team
trash@dev.null activities to remove

setup.py

There is a handy utility that is a standard part of Sugar Activity bundles, setup.py. You should use it to create and update POT files, generate a MANIFEST file and update locale files, and create .xo and .tar files for distribution.

./setup.py genpot        # generates or updates the POT file used by gettext for internationalization
./setup.py build
./setup.py fix_manifest  # updates the MANIFEST file and generates or updates the locale files used for internationalization
./setup.py dist_xo       # creates an .xo bundle from your project
./setup.py dist_source   # creates a .tar.gz file from your project

Packaging activities discussion

We are currently discussing how to package activities in the future, in order to support all distributions. Please add your comments to the following pages.

Packaging
- should we remove "Activities" section from that page; all issues where moved to Activity_Status page alsroot 10:33, 16 January 2009 (UTC)
Packaging ideas

The Sugar Control Panel

While not strictly in the realm of Activities, it may be useful on occasion to add a section to the Sugar Control Panel. Things to keep in mind.

A typical update cycle

Moved to https://github.com/sugarlabs/sugar-docs/blob/master/src/contributing.md#modifying-activities

OLPC XO game buttons

The game buttons on the OLPC XO are accessible:

The left-side buttons map to KP_Up, KP_Right, KP_Down, and KP_Left
The right-side buttons map to KP_Page_Up (o), KP_End (✓), KP_Page_Down (×), and KP_Home (◽)

The Sugar Object Chooser

The Object Chooser is the activity-level user interface to the Journal. Examples and caveats are found here.

Project Ideas

The Activity Team always needs project ideas and suggestions. Post your ideas to Activity Team/Project Ideas.

If you see something here you would like to help with, please contact us.

Wade 17:19, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Additional resources

Additional resources may be found here.

Sugar Activity development courses

There are university- and secondary-school-level courses being taught around Sugar development. Several of the syllabi are on line:

http://wiki.paraguayeduca.org/index.php/Curso_Sugar_FPUNA is being adapted by UNA
http://teachingopensource.org/index.php/RIT/The_Course is being taught at RIT

Meetings

Please check /Meetings for meeting schedules/logs.

Moving to Sugar Labs

A few notes re moving to the Sugar Labs infrastructure:

use git init to create a new project unless it already exists.
use setup.py dist_source to make the source package associated with your project.
source packages now go in:

download.sugarlabs.org:/srv/www-sugarlabs/download/sources/

from there, if your project (if it is an Activity) probably belongs in the honey subdirectory, e.g.,

download.sugarlabs.org:/srv/www-sugarlabs/download/sources/honey/Abacus/

If your project is part of the Sugar core, it goes in sucrose/fructose/ (for core Activities) or sucrose/glucose (for core modules), e.g.,

download.sugarlabs.org:/srv/www-sugarlabs/download/sources/fructore/TurtleArt/
download.sugarlabs.org:/srv/www-sugarlabs/download/sources/glucose/sugar-toolkit/

don't forget to update addons as well!!

activities.sugarlabs.org

and to copy the tar file to download.sugarlabs.org

download.sugarlabs.org:/download/sources/honey/...
download.sugarlabs.org:/download/sources/sucrose/fructose/...

Subpages

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
+{{Graduate|Walterbender will move this to http://developer.sugarlabs.org in 2016}}
 <noinclude><div class="noprint">{{TeamHeader|Activity Team}}</div></noinclude>
@@ Line 9: / Line 11: @@
 === Ask your 'newbie' question on-line ===
-Join [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRC IRC] channel [irc://irc.freenode.net/sugar-newbies #sugar-newbies] (e.g. via [http://webchat.freenode.net/?randomnick=1&prompt=1&channels=sugar-newbies web client]) and ask your question about activity, or sugar core, development process. Also browse chat [http://meeting.sugarlabs.org/sugar-newbies logs].
+Join [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRC IRC] channel [irc://irc.freenode.net/sugar #sugar] (e.g. via [http://webchat.freenode.net/?randomnick=1&prompt=1&channels=sugar web client]) and ask your question about activity, or sugar core, development process. Also browse chat [http://meeting.sugarlabs.org/sugar logs].
 === Creating a new activity ===
-See [[Activity Team/Resources|Activity Team Resources]].
+See [[Activity Team/Creating a New Activity|Creating a New Activity]] and [[Activity Team/Resources|Activity Team Resources]].
+=== Automated Testing ===
-=== Problems logging in to Gitorious? ===
+See [[Automated Activity Testing]]
-Gitorious users are sometimes having their IP addresses incorrectly blacklisted by OSU-OSL, the organization that hosts git.sugarlabs.org.  If your SSH key is rejected with the error "Access denied or bad repository path", please open a ticket by emailing support@ouosl.org.
+===Port to GTK3===
-This has happened to a number of activity authors and we are working on getting it resolved.
+We have hints on [[Features/GTK3/Porting|porting from GTK2 to GTK3]].
 ===Move an activity===
-We need help moving activities over to Sugar Labs from OLPC's servers.  This is a great way to get started helping out the Activity Team.  See [[Activity Team/How_to_migrate_from_OLPC]] for instructions, and [[Activity Team/Activity Status]] for the list of activities that need to be moved.
+We need help moving activities over to Sugar Labs from GitHub servers.  This is a great way to get started helping out the Activity Team.  See [[Activity Team/How to migrate from Gitorious]] for instructions, and [[Activity Team/Activity Status]] for the list of activities that need to be moved.
 While moving activities, it would be great to check that the .pot files are up to date and the MANIFEST is correct.  This will really help out the distro packagers.
+== Set up Sugar Labs services ==
+* '''Upload a xo bundle''' to [http://activities.sugarlabs.org/ activities.sugarlabs.org].  Be sure to include a couple of screenshots of your activity in action.
+* If your activity is part of Fructose, '''upload a .tar.bz2''' to [http://download.sugarlabs.org/ download.sugarlabs.org].  Request a shell account from the [[Infrastructure Team]] if you don't have one already.
+* '''Update the OLPC wiki page''' for the Activity, noting the migration. Use the [http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Template:Migrated_to_sl.o Migrated to sl.o] template.
+* '''Change sugar-jhbuild''' to point to the new repository if this activity was included in sugar-jhbuild (enter a ticket in http://dev.sugarlabs.org if you have no access).
+* Ask an [[Activity Team/Contacts|Activity Team Coordinator]] to create a '''Trac component''' for your activity.
 ===Cross-platform compatibility===
@@ Line 32: / Line 43: @@
 The [[Activity Team/Compatibility Tips|Compatibility Tips]] page is a place to accumulate tips.
+===Migrating from GTK2 to GTK3===
+The Sugar platform is migrating from GTK2 to GTK3 to stay relevant with upstream changes and benefit from their efforts. Sugar 0.96 (available in OLPC 12.1 development builds) includes support for a transition period, where both GTK2 and GTK3 activities can coexists, but new Sugar features will only be added to the GTK3 toolkit (e.g., improvements in touchscreen support). Have a read through the [[Features/GTK3/Porting|migration notes]], and the [http://python-gtk-3-tutorial.readthedocs.org/en/latest/index.html GTK3 Python tutorials] to get a feel for how things need to be changed. New activities should be developed with GTK3, unless you need to support an existing deployment today using an older build.
 ===Modify Activities===
@@ Line 37: / Line 52: @@
 A guide has been  written describing how to make simple modifications to popular Sugar  activities.  Examples include adding sounds to TamTam, blocks to  TurtleArt, buttons to Calculate, etc.
-*[[Activity_Team/Modifying_an_Activity]]
+* [[Activity Team/Modifying an Activity]]
+===Remote control your XO===
+[[Activity Team/Remote control your XO|Remote control your XO]] from your development machine can be handy while developing an activity.
+===Internationalization===
+We use '''[http://docs.python.org/library/gettext.html gettext]''' to internationalize activities. The basic steps are:
+In your Python code:
+ from gettext import gettext as _
+Hence forth, encapsulate strings that you want translated in _():
+ _('string to be translated')
+Run <code>setup.py</code> to generate a POT file for your project. This file will contain a reference to all of the encapsulated strings.
+From here, you need to:
+# <code>git add</code>, <code>commit</code>, and <code>push</code> the POT file to git
+# request that your project be added to the pootle server (by filing a task to the localization component on bugs.sugarlabs.org)
+# add pootle as a committer to your project on gitorious
+Once translations are committed to your project:
+# do a <code>git pull</code> to get a local copy of the .po files
+# run <code>setup.py fix_manifest</code> to create the .mo files used at run time
+Details can be found on the [[Translation Team/i18n Best Practices]] page.
 ===General overview of git===
-Read the brief overview below but then '''start''' with James Cameron's [[Activity Team/Git Tutorial|git tutorial]].
+Read the brief overview below but then '''start''' with our
+* [[Activity Team/Git Tutorial|git tutorial]].
 ====glossary====
-:VCS: Version Control System. Keeps track of changes to a set of files.
+;VCS: Version Control System &mdash; keeps track of changes to a set of files.
-:git: a modern, distributed VCS
+;git: the distributed VCS used by Sugar Labs
-:commit: set of changes to files tracked by a VCS, accompanied by metadata (author, description, etc.)
+;commit: set of changes to files tracked by a VCS, accompanied by metadata (author, description, etc.)
-:diff/patch: (usually textual) representation of changes. Also the names of specific tools to create resp. apply this representation.
+;diff/patch: (usually textual) representation of changes. These are also the names of specific tools used to create/apply these representations of changes.
-:repository: storage place for commits, usually of a certain piece of software
+;repository: storage place for commits, usually of a certain piece of software
-:gitorious: software for hosting git repositories, including a web interface for administration
+;gitorious: software for hosting git repositories, including a web interface for administration
-:git.sugarlabs.org: server hosted by Sugar Labs running gitorious
+;git.sugarlabs.org: server hosted by Sugar Labs running gitorious
+;GitHub: a web-based hosting service Git repository.  Sugar Labs is migrating projects to this service.
 ====Setup====
-(once per machine you're working on)
+(Once per machine you're working on)
-  git clone git://git.sugarlabs.org/whatever/mainline.git whatever
+  git clone git://github.com/whatever/mainline.git whatever
 ====Regular usage====
@@ Line 79: / Line 121: @@
 So if you ever mess up and don't know how to fix it yourself, please
 stop (at least for me that's usually the hardest part ;) ), try to
-recollect the exact sequence of actions (e.g. from shell history) and ask
+recollect the exact sequence of actions (e.g., from shell history) and ask
 for help.
@@ Line 88: / Line 130: @@
 ----
-====Additional background on git====
+{{:Activity Team/Git}}
-* [[Activity Team/Git FAQ|Sugar Labs git FAQ]]
+== Maintainers ==
-* [http://book.git-scm.com/ Git Community Book]
-* John Wiegley has written an overview of git: [http://ftp.newartisans.com/pub/git.from.bottom.up.pdf Git from the bottom up].
+{{:Activity Team/Maintainers}}
-* Charles Duran from Harvard has written a lovely overview of git at [http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~cduan/technical/git/ Understanding Git Conceptually].
-* GNOME maintains a [http://www.gnome.org/~federico/misc/git-cheat-sheet.txt list of references to git for mortals].
-* [http://progit.org/book/ Pro Git] by Scott Chacon
-* [http://www.gitcasts.com/ Gitcasts]
-* Anish Mangal explains the [http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/sugar-devel/2010-October/027633.html git workflow] on the Sugar development mailing list
 == Testers ==
-Please see the  [[Features/Soas_V4/ASLOxo_Activity_Test_Table|Activity Test-table page]]  for tester information.
+Please see the  [[Testing/Activity Test Table]] for tester information.
 == Background information ==
@@ Line 131: / Line 168: @@
 == Misc. ==
+===Mime types and file suffixes===
+You can associate your activity with mime types by including a mime_types entry in the activity/activity.info file; e.g.,
+ mime_types = text/plain;text/x-python;text/x-logo;text/x-svg;application/xml;text/html;text/xml;image/svg+xml
+You can associate your activity with a file suffix by including a mimetypes.xml file in your activity subdirectory:
+ <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
+ <mime-info xmlns="http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/shared-mime-info">
+    <mime-type type="application/x-turtle-art">
+       <comment xml:lang="en">Turtle Art</comment>
+       <glob pattern="*.ta"/>
+    </mime-type>
+ </mime-info>
+'''Note:''' You cannot just copy your activity into the ~/Activities directory. You have to install it as a .xo bundle or using 'setup.py install' (note that the latter is tricky as the command might get your paths messed up).  This installation step will create a file --> ~/.local/share/mime/packages/<your-bundle_id>.xml
+If your activity does not register any mimetype, then it won't matter.
+If your activity was already properly installed (with sugar-install-bundle), then copying new source into Activities will not be affected by this problem unless the new source registers a new mimetype that the old source did not.
 === Activity Team users on activities.sugarlabs.org ===
@@ Line 142: / Line 201: @@
 There is a handy utility that is a standard part of Sugar Activity bundles, setup.py. You should use it to create and update POT files, generate a MANIFEST file and update locale files, and create .xo and .tar files for distribution.
-  ./setup.py genpot
+  ./setup.py genpot        # generates or updates the POT file used by gettext for internationalization
   ./setup.py build
-  ./setup.py fix_manifest
+  ./setup.py fix_manifest  # updates the MANIFEST file and generates or updates the locale files used for internationalization
-  ./setup.py dist_xo
+  ./setup.py dist_xo       # creates an .xo bundle from your project
-  ./setup.py dist_source
+  ./setup.py dist_source   # creates a .tar.gz file from your project
 ===Packaging activities discussion===
@@ Line 161: / Line 220: @@
 === A typical update cycle ===
-Anyone can contribute a patch to a Sugar Activity. The typical work cycle involves an interaction with the activity (project) maintainer as follows:
+Moved to https://github.com/sugarlabs/sugar-docs/blob/master/src/contributing.md#modifying-activities
-# make a clone (anyone)
-# make your changes (anyone)
-# mail your patch to sugar_devel (anyone)
-# make changes as per suggestions by the project maintainer and developer community (anyone)
-# push your changes (anyone)
-# request a merge (anyone)
-# write release notes (anyone)
-# tag the new version in git (project maintainer)
-# create the .xo and .tar files (project maintainer)
-# upload .tar to download.sugarlabs.org (project maintainer)
-# upload .xo to activities.sugarlabs.org (project maintainer)
-# update wiki documentation (anyone)
 === OLPC XO game buttons ===
@@ Line 207: / Line 254: @@
 Please check [[/Meetings]] for meeting schedules/logs.
+== Moving to Sugar Labs ==
+A few notes re moving to the Sugar Labs infrastructure:
+* use git init to create a new project unless it already exists.
+* use <code>setup.py dist_source</code> to make the source package associated with your project.
+* source packages now go in:
+ download.sugarlabs.org:/srv/www-sugarlabs/download/sources/
+: from there, if your project (if it is an Activity) probably belongs in the honey subdirectory, e.g.,
+ download.sugarlabs.org:/srv/www-sugarlabs/download/sources/honey/Abacus/
+: If your project is part of the Sugar core, it goes in sucrose/fructose/ (for core Activities) or sucrose/glucose (for core modules), e.g.,
+ download.sugarlabs.org:/srv/www-sugarlabs/download/sources/fructore/TurtleArt/
+ download.sugarlabs.org:/srv/www-sugarlabs/download/sources/glucose/sugar-toolkit/
+* don't forget to update addons as well!!
+ activities.sugarlabs.org
+* and to copy the tar file to download.sugarlabs.org
+ download.sugarlabs.org:/download/sources/honey/...
+ download.sugarlabs.org:/download/sources/sucrose/fructose/...
 == Subpages ==