Difference between revisions of "Platform Team/Package Management System"

Revision as of 13:45, 4 September 2011

Summary

Sweets is a Package Management System based on Zero Install, a decentralized cross-distribution software installation system. It is intended to distribute various software projects created in the Sugar ecosystem, such as libraries, sugar itself, and sugar activities.

This new distribution method is initiated assuming that:

The method to share software projects should to be as convenient as possible.
It is important to stimulate users into becoming doers, to modify existing activities, and to share the results of their experiments with other people, i.e., a distribution method should handle different variants of the same project.
This distribution method is not intended to be the only one, but is targeted more towards direct distribution—from software creators to software users.

The purpose is to create a new distribution method instead of reusing:

.xo bundles
- Work smoothly only for pure python activities, and only if all (and the same) dependencies are installed on all systems. They stop working smoothly if activities use non-standard dependencies or contain binaries.
- But, are not effective in supporting the use of multiple versions of software, e.g., the results of experiments (the work) of different doers, simultaneously. Users must manually handle the variety of activity versions, e.g., sort out all the local bundles or directories in ~/Activities.
native packages
- Not the shortest way to connect developers with users.
- In most cases, they don't support multiple versions of the same project.
- They don't work at all for sharing results of experiments.

At the same time, existing distribution methods are reused in Sweets:

.xo bundles is a subset of the Sweets workflow
- It is possible to bundle an entire directory as a sweet project to use it as a regular .xo file.
native packages
- Sweets is not intended to create one more GNU/Linux distribution. It distributes only projects that people create within the Sugar community; all other software, i.e., dependencies, will be reused from native packages.
- For cases like Sugar deployments, using the more centralized, regular repositories (third party or official GNU/Linux distributions with native packages) makes more sense. These native packages of Sugar software will be included in Sweets, as well. When people start using Sweets on top of these Sugar distributions, they will have the chance to choose between natively packaged Sugar components and components that came directly from software creators.
- It is possible, when there is a need, to automatically package sweets into native packages. See Sweets Distribution, for example.

Zero Install basis

Sweets is entirely based on Zero Install. Sweets might be treated as a tools and infrastructure wrapper around Zero Install. See Zero Install's home page, http://0install.net/, for detailed information. And the design page in particular.

Harmonic Distribution

A systematic approach to supporting the full cycle of discovery, learning, collaboration, and development within the Sugar Learning Platform ecosystem. Harmonic Distribution consists of software, services, and practices that make interacting within the Sugar community more useful and complete. Harmonic Distribution consists of two major parts, the Sweets Distribution and the Sugar Network.

Sweets Distribution

A set of repositories that provide base Sugar software within heterogeneous environments including the most popular GNU/Linux distributions and hardware platforms within the Sugar community. Sweets Distribution provides the easiest way to launch Sugar and start exploring the rest of the Sugar related content using the Sugar Network.

Sugar Network

A system that is designed to share within the Sugar community different kinds of content, e.g., Sugar Activities, artifacts created by Sugar Activities, books, lessons, reviews, comments, questions, etc. It uses social network mechanisms, to setup relationships between community members intending to improve Sugar Network content. The Sugar Network consists of one global server and an arbitrary number of distributed servers to support people who don't have direct access to the global one, e.g., due to lack of Internet connectivity.

Getting involved

Report on bugs.
Read the HACKING file to know how to contribute with code.

Resources

Sources.
Recipe files specification.

@@ Line 31: / Line 31: @@
 Sweets is entirely based on Zero Install. Sweets might be treated as a tools and infrastructure wrapper around Zero Install. See Zero Install's home page, http://0install.net/, for detailed information. And the [http://0install.net/injector-design.html design] page in particular.
+{{:Platform Team/Sweets/Glossary}}
-== Dictionary ==
-A list of terms to understand the basic concepts of ''Sweets''.
-=====Zero Install, 0install=====
-:Decentralized cross-distribution software installation system that ''Sweets'' is based on.
-=====Sweets=====
-:Package management wrapper around ''Zero Install''.
-=====sweet, sweet project=====
-:Distribution entities in ''Sweets'', i.e., packages. In other words, software projects that have ''recipe'' files in their sources that are being released via ''Sweets''.
-=====feed=====
-:A file in [http://0install.net/interface-spec.html XML notation] that contains information about all possible variants of the software, i.e., ''implementations'', that can be launched.
-=====interface=====
-:This is the cornerstone of ''Zero Install'' and, thus, ''Sweets'', as well. To make a ''feed'' useful for other people, they are placed somewhere on the Internet to be accessible via HTTP/FTP ([[Platform_Team/Infrastructure|http://sweets.sugarlabs.org]] for the ''Sweets'' case). The full Web url, such as http://0install.net/2006/interfaces/ZeroInstall-GUI.xml, is a unique identifier of a distribution entity within ''Zero Install''/''Sweets''. This powerful identifier is named the ''interface''.
-:This url is all that is needed to run software from everywhere there is a connection to the Internet.
-=====implementation=====
-:One or several bundles that contain one particular implementation of software projects that are being distributed via ''Zero Install''. ''Implementations'' are  [[Platform_Team/Recipe_Specification|attributed]] with versions, stability levels, targeted machine architectures, and OS types. It is possible to have several implementations for the same software version if there are differences between launching them on different OSes or machine architectures. Another important attribute of ''implementations'' are dependencies of this particular ''implementation'', formed as a list of ''interfaces''. ''Feeds'' contain information about all existing implementations in order to let ''Zero Install'' choose the right one on the client side, taking into account tons of details, like machine architecture, OS type, stability levels, or dependency restrictions.
-=====recipe=====
-:On the ''Zero Install'' level, developers work with ''feeds'' manually. In the ''Sweets'' case, the regular way is to [[Platform_Team/Recipe_Specification|use ''recipes'']] (but it is still possible to fallback to using ''feeds'' at any time). In short, it is an analog of spec files in GNU/Linux distributions, e.g., RPM {{Code|.spec}} files or {{Code|debian/}} directories in Debian. ''Recipes'' do not specify ready-to-launch ''implementations'' like ''feeds'' do, but rather, only describe the lastest software version. The ''feed'' will be generated automatically on [[Platform_Team/Infrastructure|a server]] (along with preserving the history of versions) after [[Platform_Team/Guide/Sweets_Packaging|releasing]] a new version of the software.
-=====Short form for sweet interfaces=====
-:Within ''Sweets'', it is possible to omit the {{Code|http://sweets.sugarlabs.org/}} prefix for sweet ''interfaces'' so as to make usage more expressive, e.g., in ''recipe'' files. It is always possible to use the full ''interfaces''.
-=====Implemented interfaces=====
-:One particular ''sweet'' implements one or several ''interfaces'' [[Platform_Team/Recipe_Specification#Common_options|according]] to its ''recipe'' files. The reason for having several ''interfaces'' is that the same ''sweet'' might represent itself, e.g., http://sweets.sugarlabs.org/~alsroot/browse, and the upstream ''sweet'' that was used as a basis for the current one, e.g., http://sweets.sugarlabs.org/browse. Furthermore, on the client side, it will be possible to get implementations from {{Code|~alsroot/browse}} while launching {{Code|browse}} ''sweet''.
-=====Associated interfaces=====
-:''Associated interfaces'' is the alternate way to setup upstream-downstream relations between ''interfaces''. If a ''recipe'' file [[Platform_Team/Recipe_Specification#Common_options|mentions]] some ''interfaces'' as ''associated'', ''implementations'' from these interfaces will be added to the ''implementations'' list of the current one. For example, if the http://sweets.sugarlabs.org/sdk/sugar ''interface'' (the pure ''sweet'' Sugar Shell) contains http://sweets.sugarlabs.org/base/sugar (an alias to the natively packaged Sugar Shell) as an ''associated interface'', it will be possible while launching {{Code|sdk/sugar}}, to run natively packaged sugar that came from {{Code|base/sugar}}.
-=====local sweet=====
-:It is an important high-level concept in ''Sweets'', which is intended to make the development process of ''sweet'' projects more comfortable. Technically, it is the source software of the ''sweet'' project (i.e., with a ''recipe'' file) placed somewhere in the file system and registered in the local ''Sweets'' instance as a single ''implementation'' for ''interfaces'' it ''implements''. It is always possible to run this ''local sweet'' directly by using the full filesystem path as an ''interface'', but its most useful feature is reuse of the ''local implementation'' in routine ''Sweets'' workflows. For example, if sugar-toolkit sources were cloned to the {{Code|~/src/sugar-toolkit}} directory, then while running a {{Code|sugar}} ''sweet'', it would become possible to reuse local sugar-toolkit sources as a regular ''implementation''.
-=====sweet package=====
-:Using the http://packages.sugarlabs.org Web UI, it is possible to create a repository with native packages from released ''sweets''.
-=====Sweets Distribution=====
-:It is a [http://download.sugarlabs.org/packages/SweetsDistribution:/ repository] with Glucose and Fructose ''sweet packages'' based on {{Code|sdk/}} ''sweets''.
 == Further reading ==

Difference between revisions of "Platform Team/Package Management System"

Revision as of 13:45, 4 September 2011

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