User:Inkyfingers/Testing Sweets

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This page may be incomprehensible for 48 hours. --Inkyfingers 15:51, 19 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

I propose to paste below: Platform_Team/Guide/Sweets_Usage] ...

Then I cut the introduction and first paragraph.

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

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." or "Relogin from X session"

Minor issue 1. a) "Restart the machine" seems clumsy. b) distro-non-specific instructions I guess are 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? Or is it a "more advanced 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 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.

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

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.

The material below this point has not been edited.

Please move this marker if you edit, thanks.

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).