Features/Host Version

Summary

Using "hosts" variable in the activity.info files to determine whether an activity runs on the specific Sugar installation.

Owner

Name: Christoph Derndorfer
Email: christoph AT olpcnews DOT com

Current status

Targeted release: 0.86
Last updated: 2009-07-21
Percentage of completion: 0%

Detailed Description

With 0.86 being on the horizont, 0.84 being used on SoaS, 0.82 being widely used among the G1G1 community and some deployments and many deployment still using pre-0.82 software I think the issue of activity compatibility deserves some serious attention. Otherwise this has the potential to create _a lot of_ confusion and frustration further down the road.

Not sure what the original plans wrt the technical implemention of this feature were but I would assume the harder part of solving this problem is spreading the word among activity developers to update their .xo bundles accordingly.

Benefit to Sugar

What is the benefit to the platform? If this is a major capability update, what has changed? If this is a new feature, what capabilities does it bring? Why will Sugar become a better platform or project because of this feature?

Scope

What work do the developers have to accomplish to complete the feature in time for release? Is it a large change affecting many parts of the distribution or is it a very isolated change? What are those changes?

How To Test

This does not need to be a full-fledged document. Describe the dimensions of tests that this feature is expected to pass when it is done. If it needs to be tested with different hardware or software configurations, indicate them. The more specific you can be, the better the community testing can be.

Remember that you are writing this how to for interested testers to use to check out your feature - documenting what you do for testing is OK, but it's much better to document what *I* can do to test your feature.

A good "how to test" should answer these four questions:

What special hardware / data / etc. is needed (if any)?
How do I prepare my system to test this feature? What packages need to be installed, config files edited, etc.?
What specific actions do I perform to check that the feature is working like it's supposed to?
What are the expected results of those actions?

User Experience

Depends on the implementation but one way could be to fail gracefully by showing a warning when an activity that doesn't work on the specific Sugar version is downloaded/run. The warning message could also include information or a link to information on how to update the XO to the latest version.

Dependencies

TBD

Contingency Plan

None yet

Documentation