Features/SoaS customization
Summary
SOAS Deployment Customization
Owner
- Name: Carlo Falciola
- Email: <cfalciola dot yahoo dot it>
Current status
- Targeted release: (0.88)
- Last updated: (2009 Nov 24)
- Percentage of completion: 5%
Detailed Description
In order to support deployments activities the standard SOAS image should allow a limited degree of customization for basic/advanced settings.
This page would be the start of a documentation effort aimed to document those basic interfaces:
Benefit to Sugar
- to ease the personalization efforts from field organizations
- to avoid regression issues related to personalization done in the wrong places
- to ease peacefully coexistence between personalization needs and bug fixing/support activities
Scope
Actually will be mostly a documentation effort - no impact on code in this phase.
How To Test
User Experience
In case of a deploy in a school we could not expect children or teacher to spend a large initial amount of time to set up basic parameters for SOAS usage (es. LANGUAGE, Timezone, Keyboard, servers, etc).
Whatever approach would be taken in order to land those initial settings in the actual sticks/images, the very first step is to try to define with increasing detail:
- what all those settings are
- where a deployer or developer could find them
- how to operate changes to those setting without creating regression errors in the procedure
Dependencies
- None on code
- Once consensus being reached on the customization documentation, developers that changes Sugar in areas that impact this documentation set should fell obliged to update it consistently and notify downstream.
Contingency Plan
If we don't complete this feature, it can be left out. Nothing else depends upon it.
Documentation
SOAS Deployment Settings Table (Draft)
| Description | What | Where | How | Complexity | Notes/References |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Language | LANGUAGE and LANG environment variables | conf file, login/boot scripts | .... | .... | |
| Timezone | Environment that define timezone | login/boot scripts | .... | ..... |
|
| Jabber Server(s) | address of jabber server for the school/class | conf file? | ...... | ... | |
| WiFi settings (auto connect) | in case of proxy, passwords needed | conf file? | ..... | ... | see also mail: (http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/sugar-devel/2009-November/020967.html ) |
| Added Activity (added to the default set) | Activity Bundle | Filesystem or Journal? | ... | ... | see also mail: (http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/sugar-devel/2009-November/020967.html ) |
| Preferred Activities list reworked/reordered | text file, proprietary format | /home/liveuser/.sugar/default/favorite_activities (in Soas) | ... | ... | see also mail: (http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/sugar-devel/2009-November/020967.html ) |
| User account | parameters | conf file ? | schoolclass info to be added (?) | ... | ... |
| Additional Drivers | Linux drivers to support specific HW | Standard Linux Drivers locations | Link to an Howto Page | (Could be hard) | |
| Additional Multimedia | to enhance localization for specific packages (es. Gcompris Voices, openstreetmap dataset) | /Activities... | ... | ... | |
| Additional Contents (eBooks, images, ecc.) | files | to land in Journal or in compressed r/o partition | ... | ... | |
| Additional static HTML (local homepage, etc.) | files | to land in ... | ... | ... | see also mail: (http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/sugar-devel/2009-November/020967.html ) |
Note: The "Complexity" column could be the base for differentiate the effort/scope of personalization effort:
- some of them could be defined as "standard" and potentially we could have half baked tools to smooth efforts (the idea is that's far easier to write a well done & safe script to be used by deployer on the field other than increase the Sugar UI with rarely used features)
- some of them could be defined as "hard" and then documented only then left to field/deployers will...
Release Notes
...
Comments and Discussion
References
A basic list of setting to be described could be taken from http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/index.php?title=Request_New_Feature (by Andrea 16:41, 21 May 2009 (UTC) ):
- Date, Time & Timezone
- Language
- User Accounts
- WiFi settings
- Jabber server(s).
- Add/Remove Programs
- System Updates
- Desktop GUI settings
- Name SD card and USB media drives, etc.
- What else?