Platform Team/Package Management System

Summary

Increase level of compartmentalization in Sucrose.

Owner

This should link to your home wiki page so we know who you are

• Name: Your Name

Include you email address that you can be reached should people want to contact you about helping with your feature, status is requested, or technical issues need to be resolved

• Email: <your email address so we can contact you, invite you to meetings, etc.>

Current status

• Targeted release: ASAP
• Last updated: Sun Jul 12 15:48:08 UTC 2009
• Percentage of completion: 0%

Detailed Description

The major idea is to have a solid core (with stable release cycle) <=> dbus-API/sugar-toolkit-API (ideally, only dbus) <=> unlimited number of activities that use core functionality and do not follow 6 months release cycle (which could be overmuch for activity).

It could looks like:

• core - glucose, six months (or so) release cycle, w/o any activities, only API
  • in ideal, it should have only dbus API
• bridge - sugar-port for example, between all (in ideal) already deployed sugars and activities, i.e., it provides backwards compatibility (so the same activity code will work on all Sugars) and at the same time provides features from newest sugar (so the same activity code will use last Sugar's features).
  • We could write this level in vala to provide core functionality for wide range of programming languages.
• world - the rest of Sugar world, i.e., Fructose/Honey (but now there are no differences between them) that use core directly, if all deployed Sugars have the same API for desired functionality (for example, in case of preselected mime type, ObjectsChooser has different API for 0.82-0.86), or use bridge otherwise.
  imho another point to have activities outside of core release cycle - activities have a shorter release cycle then the core has.

And of course deployers can form any sets from these components

    Core                       Bridge                         World         
+------------+                                            +------------+
| Sugar-0.82 |---+                                    +---| Activity A |
+------------+   |    +---------------------------+   |   +------------+
+------------+   |    | sugar-port                |   |   +------------+
|     ...    |--dbus--| do not fail on 0.82       |---+---|    ...     |
+------------+   |    | but uses all 777 features |   |   +------------+
+------------+   |    +---------------------------+   |   +------------+
| Sugar-777  |---+                                    +---| Activity Z |
+------------+                                            +------------+

Benefit to Sugar

Make sugar environment more straightforward by decoupling core from other stuff and using tough and well maintainable dbus API to let activities run on all (in ideal) deployed Sugar platforms.

Scope

Sugar core parts.

How To Test

Not yet implemented

User Experience

Not yet implemented

Dependencies

Not yet implemented

Contingency Plan

None necessary, revert to previous release behaviour.

Documentation

• Michael Stone's email

Release Notes

Not yet implemented

Comments and Discussion

• See discussion tab for this feature