Activities/Develop

Download from http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addon/4058

About Develop

Develop allows you to edit existing Activities or create new ones. It allows the viewing and editing of multiple files and gives easy access to error logs. It includes templates for a number of sample Hello World Activities.

You get the screen below the first time you start Develop and every time you Start New but not if you resume a project. It gives the option of editing an existing Activity or creating a new one from a "Hello World!" template. It is recommended that beginners create a new Activity.

The main screen is shown below. In this case, a new Activity called testgtk2 has been created from the gtk2 template. The left pane shows the files and directories that comprise the Activity and the right pane shows the contents of its main file, activity.py

From left to right, the toolbar buttons have the following functions

Home

the title of the project
edit the Journal description
sharing (disabled)
create a bundle, use the bundle to install your Activity on other laptops

Edit

copy
paste

Search

Show source

the left hand pane shows the files and directories that comprise your Activity

Show file symbols

the left hand pane shows the classes, functions and variables in the file on the right

Show log files

shows the log files which contain error messages from running your Activity

Create an empty file

your Activity already comprises a number of files, this adds an additional empty file

Remove file

deletes the most recently viewed file, the one displayed in the right pane

Run activity

runs your activity

Stop

quits the Develop Activity

Tutorial - creating your Activity

Open Develop, start new

Create a new Activity

Select the type Gtk2

Name the Activity testgtk2

Start

Press the Run activity button on the toolbar, your testgtk2 Activity will run, it prints Hello World!. (If you look at your Home screen you have a new Activity called testgtk2.)

Editing your Activity

Stop testgtk2 and return to Develop. Edit line 70 of activity.py, "Hello World!", change this text but be careful only to change the text within the quotation marks. Press the Run activity button, the Activity now displays the new text.

Changing the icon

Shown in the left hand pane is the directory activity with a triangle next to it pointing right. Click on it to see its contents, open activity-helloworld.svg

Line 11 defines the circle of the world in the icon. Change stroke-width to "6.5". You need to restart the laptop to see the changes, the circle is now thicker.

Changing the version number

The Home view, List view shows the version number of all the installed Activities. The version number discriminates between older and newer versions of an Activity. It is used to tell if you are using the latest version. Sometimes the latest version has a bug and you want to go back to an earlier known good version.

Look in your Home view List view and you will see that testgtk2 is version 1. To alter the version number, edit activity.info line 6 which shows the activity_version=1 , change it to 2.

You may need to restart the laptop to see the changes.

Installing your Activity on another computer

Press the Create bundle button on the home toolbar , this creates a .xo bundle in the Journal. Copy this to another laptop to install your Activity.

Using the Log files to find errors

Log files are created when Activities run, they also are created by other processes. They list software errors, among other data, and can help diagnose software problems.

Assume you made a typing error, you accidentally deleted the closing quote mark " in activity.py line 70 when you were editing "Hello World!". The activity would not run, you might get an error like this:

Click on the Show log files button , the left hand pane will show the list of logfiles. Because our Activity is named testgtk2, we are looking for the file org.sugarlabs.testgtk2. If you have started testgtk2 multiple times then there are multiple logfiles. Click on org.sugarlabs.testgtk to read the logfile. The error message tells that it is line 70 of activity.py , in the string "Hello World!, it got confused at the opening quote. It got to the end of line (EOL) while scanning the string.

The Log Activity Activities/Log can also be used to view log files.

Going further

For more on making Sugar Activities see the ebook http://en.flossmanuals.net/make-your-own-sugar-activities/

For editing icons use Inkscape http://www.inkscape.org

Videos

This video shows a very early version of Develop:

I don't know much about this activity but here's my over the shoulder view of the activity: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmXDw-Z2CSI --Dennis Daniels 17:33, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Resources

Trac Tickets: OLPC Sugar Labs