User:Inkyfingers/Testing Sweets

Under construction
This page is under active construction at this time. Please check back shortly for updated information.
Ready for feedback!.--Inkyfingers 02:35, 20 December 2011 (EST)

Mint-12 successful install

notes here: Talk:Platform Team/Guide/Sugar via Sweets#Installing Sugar via sweets - in Mint-12

try this

http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Community/Distributions/Sweets_Distribution

works fine for 11.04 Linux Mint 11 I did this and it worked but alsroot wanted me to not put it on the wiki. It installs sweets-sugar 0.94.1 User:Satellit 9 Dec 2011

Exploring extra documentation

Expanding central section of Platform Team/Guide/Sweets Usage] ...

Aim of this paper

What are the opportunities of improving documentation for users at a certain point, after install and before successful launch?

Install

Imagine you are now reading Sweets/Getting started

Pre-introductory paragraphs explain what an emulator will look like, and the reasons for experimenting with it.

Introductory paragraph will have "fully" covered distro-non-specific apt-get update.

I suggest it might be a good idea to try to fix the level of experience expected of a reader. I suggest a potential reader would have some confidence at the level of http://en.flossmanuals.net/command-line/ch014_multiple-files/ . Do others think a lower level is reasonable? - define.

Then "packagekit" and issues, then download and run script "installer.sh"

Then, "After installing PackageKit, you need to restart the DBus system bus," "Relogin from X session," or "Restart the machine"

Minor issue 1. a) "Restart the machine" seems clumsy. b) I guess distro-non-specific instructions may be too difficult? It might be nice to include, say, the best available outside tutorial, even if only to demonstrate good practice?

Alternatively, sweets might be run from the sources.

Issue 2. This idea needs dealing with at an appropriate level. Is this an alternative for our reader? Under what conditions would the reader start on this method?

Upgrade

Enter in the Terminal activity, or any other terminal:

sweets upgrade

You should expect a positive response. An example of a positive response is

-- No need in upgrading

or

insert wording generated by successful upgrade.

If you run into difficulties, sweets contains a --help file. You get it with the command:

sweets -h

The file is displayed in your terminal, you get out of the file by pressing "q" for quit.

What about a negative response to your initial sweets command?

An example of a negative response at this stage is:

sweets: command not found.

If you are in this situation - did you restart either dbus or the computer before you gave the first sweets command?

You could restart the computer. If you still get a negative response from

sweets upgrade

and

sweets -h

then you need to work through the instructions above this point again.

What Sugar to launch

There are two types of Sugars that are accessible via Sweets:

• sdk/sugar, for pristine Sugar;
• dextrose/sugar, for Sugar based on Dextrose.

The terms we use are currently defined here: Platform_Team/Guide/Sweets_Usage#Search and Platform_Team/Sweets/Glossary

The name of one available sweet (alternate usage <SWEET> ) is sdk/sugar.

Another's name (alternate usage <SWEET>) is dextrose/sugar.

These lines aim to draw attention a perceived difficulty in nomenclature. Improved wording welcome.

Both Sugars can be used in the same way. This guide uses dextrose/sugar ... and may use sdk/sugar

Launch

To launch recent stable Sugar in emulator mode, type in Terminal activity or in any other terminal:

sweets dextrose/sugar:emulator

To explain:

sweets - the command to run sweets

dextrose/sugar - the sweet you want

:emulator - a command for an emulator.

To make it possible to have additional dependencies involved, e.g., to run Browse activity, use -S command-line argument:

sweets -S dextrose/sugar:emulator

adding -S forces ... wording is not to hand.

Hopefully one of those commands opened Sugar for you.

If not, try

sweets sdk/sugar:emulator

or

sweets -S sdk/sugar:emulator

If you have Sugar running - Explore

If you have a negative response to all four commands above

So this is the point of this effort!

What can we conclude? Go back, review #Upgrade above, If sweets upgrade and sweets -h were positive - sweets is installed, no?

What further commands or tools are available at this point?

One possibility, not all required packages are installed?

Referring to my own experience - Talk:Platform Team/Guide/Sugar via Sweets#Installation 2 (which is considerably abbreviated!)

the command sweets -R sdk/sugar:emulator invoked a massive download of packages - @alsroot what changed?

What would an experienced user do next?

I think it is worth discussing, and I am not sure about this, in this situation (in my experience) many investigatory commands gave misleading answers, I feel because the whole toolbox was not present. Have I drawn the wrong conclusion?

I am currently in the above described situation with Sweets on Debian Wheezy. What is suggested here, I will test there.

Alternatively, sweets might be run from the sources. This I have tried - I am not sure it adds content if one is stuck at this point?

The material below this point has not been edited.

Please move this marker if you edit, thanks.

• Back to original "Usage" page content.

Usage

Read the Sweets Glossary to understand the basic concept (and overview of the bigger picture). The rest of the text will operate with the following terms:

• SWEET, the full interface URL, like http://sweets.sugarlabs.org/sdk/sugar, or the short one, like sdk/sugar;
• COMMAND, sweet's command that indicates how to run a particular sweet; by default, sweets have only the run command, but it is possible to have several commands;
• VERSION, sweet's version

See the Sugar via Sweets guide for real examples of how to use Sweets to run Sugar Shell.

Launch

To launch a sweet with verbatim passing of optional ARGUMENTS:

sweets <SWEET> [<ARGUMENTS>]

Sometimes sweets support several launching commands; it is possible to specify one during the launch:

sweets <SWEET>:<COMMAND>

To run a particular, but not the latest, version:

sweets <SWEET> =|>=|<= <VERSION>

To get the full list of available versions:

sweets status <SWEET> -v

To get information, e.g., a list of supported commands, about a sweet:

sweets show <SWEET>

Troubleshooting

After getting any unpredictable Sweets behaviour, read the following notes.

Keep feeds up-to-date

Feeds are being updated from time to time. After experiencing any problems, and for refreshing the local feeds cache, it will be useful to re-download feeds. Use, once, the -R command line argument for the launch command (make sure that -R goes before the SWEET, because using it afterwards will cause passing it as a SWEET's argument):

sweets -R <SWEET>

Analyze dependencies tree

If sweets can't find a proper implementation, see the e lines in the output of:

sweets status <SWEET> -vdd

Keep the system in consistent state

Asking Sweets to launch a sweets might mean installing new packages via PackageKit. In most cases, PackageKit can handle possible issues with native packages and, at worst, will fail as well, in order to stop any further Sweets operations. Nevertheless, it can be useful to keep unbroken native packages.

Search

It is possible to search sweets among locally known ones and those registered on http://sweets.sugarlabs.org (not yet implemented). The search is based on the Xapian search engine. Thus, it is possible to use Xapian's query language.

For command format is:

sweets search <QUERY>

Notice that partial search is enabled. So, the query tele will be treated as tele* to search all words that start from tele.

sweets supports the following search prefixes based on recipe options:

• interface the first interface from the implementations list, e.g., http://sweets.sugarlabs.org/sdk/sugar;
• sweet the first interface from the implementations list in short Sweets notations, e.g., sdk/sugar;
• implement the list of implemented interfaces;
• associate the list of associated interfaces;
• name the short name of a sweet;
• summary sweet's summary;
• description long sweet's description;
• category list of category names;
• license list of licenses;
• type sweet's type, which might be library, application or activity;
• keep if activity, that a sweet is representing, is favorited;
• tags the list of sweet's tags;
• mime_types the list of activity MIME types, that a sweet is representing or supports.

So, it is possible to search only among particular sweet attributes, like name:telepathy to search only among particular sweet names.

sweets support additional notation for exact searching in the form of prefix:=string. For example the query name:=sugar will find sweets only with exactly sugar as a name and omit names like sugar-base. If the search string contains spaces, wrap it within double quotes, name:="Sugar Commander". Note, wildcards do not work in the exact search case where asterisks will be treated literally.

Current limitations

• For now, sweets knows only enough about the glucose dependencies to install them from native packages in Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Mandriva, openSUSE.
• Activities can't reuse sweets benefits.

Feedback

• Submit your bug report or feature request.
• Subscribe to the sugar-devel mailing list and email with the subject prefixed with [SWEETS].
• Ask your question on IRC channels, #sugar (not logged) or #sugar-newbies (logged).