Platform Team/Polyol

Summary

Intermediate level GObject based libraries stack.

Concepts

• Glucose - sugar core processes.

• Polyol - level that contains glucose compatibility libraries and libraries that are not tied to glucose directly (or not tied at all).
  The reason for such a level is that it will be deployed by 0install, e.g., it would be possible to have a recent Polyol stack on Sugar 0.82.
  • all libraries are written in Vala, i.e., based on pure GObjects, and could be used by non-python-based activities.
  • each Polyol component has its own release schedule, i.e., there are no Polyol official releases (it looks like in Gentoo)
  • glucose compatibility components will support several (popular among sugar deployers) sugar releases
  • except for the glucose compatibility components, all Polyol libraries are glucose independent.

• Activity - regular activities would not use glucose directly, rather they would only access glucose through the Polyol level.
  There is no need to code special activities, the sugar-toolkit API will be preserved, and activity developers will benefit because Polyol will support the recent sugar-toolkit API, e.g., they could use the new toolbars design even on Sugar 0.82.