Features/Sugar Update Control ASLO

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Summary

Modify the existing Sugar Update Control to pull from activities.sugarlabs.org

Owner

Name: David Farning
Email: <dfarning@sugarlabs.org>

Current status

Targeted release: .86
Last updated: 15 August 2009
Percentage of completion: 100%

Source

http://git.sugarlabs.org/projects/update

Detailed Description

Update enables users to update their installed activities from the Activities Library at activities.sugarlabs.org. Activities.sugarlabs.org is base on the well established addons.mozilla.org.

Using ASLO the client can request information about updated by sending a url of the form

http://activities.sugarlabs.org/services/update.php?id=org.laptop.WebActivity&appVersion=0.82

ASLO responds by returning XML of the form

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<RDF:RDF xmlns:RDF="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#" xmlns:em="http://www.mozilla.org/2004/em-rdf#"><RDF:Description about="urn:mozilla:extension:org.laptop.WebActivity">
   <em:updates>
       <RDF:Seq>
           <RDF:li resource="urn:mozilla:extension:org.laptop.WebActivity:102"/>
       </RDF:Seq>
   </em:updates>
</RDF:Description>

<RDF:Description about="urn:mozilla:extension:org.laptop.WebActivity:102">
   <em:version>102</em:version>
   <em:targetApplication>
       <RDF:Description>
           <em:id>{3ca105e0-2280-4897-99a0-c277d1b733d2}</em:id>
           <em:minVersion>0.82</em:minVersion>
           <em:maxVersion>0.82</em:maxVersion>
           <em:updateLink>http://activities.sugarlabs.org/downloads/file/26063/browse-102.xo</em:updateLink>
           <em:updateInfoURL>http://activities.sugarlabs.org/versions/updateInfo/29040/%APP_LOCALE%/</em:updateInfoURL>
           <em:updateHash>sha256:d06c16a1c106dbd1a706f322d75a143d0b4e32815c22f3d95589de83e5480365</em:updateHash>
       </RDF:Description>
   </em:targetApplication>
</RDF:Description></RDF:RDF>

Benefit to Sugar

1. This benefits Sugar by moving the entire activities infrastructure to activities.sugarlabs.org rather than being spread across a wiki and aslo.

2. It reduces activity developer work load by using the established activites.sugarlabs.org upload process to update activities.

3. It reduces and isolates infrastructure load between wiki, activities.sl.o, and download system.

a. ASLO provides all necessary update information in a single network transaction.
b. ASLO is backed by memcache, so standard update pings are very cheap.
c. ASLO can be configured to store and serve downloads from download-farm to ease scaling issues.

Scope

Technically the scope is limited. Most of the changes are inside sugar-update-control or are in ASLO.

There will not be external api changes.

Over the last several months, ASLO has been improving and proving it's reliability. Many activities are being served via ASLO as their information is marked deprecated on wiki.laptop.org. Shifting update to point to also will require clear communication to end users and developers.

Implementation

Updater component for control panel

How To Test

Click on M Settings -> Software update.

Visually verify the "From Version XXX to XXX" is correct for your system.

NOTE: the updater currently reports information on all activities, not just the ones with valid updates. This is for debug purposes.

User Experience

Nothing should change from user point of view.

Dependencies

None

Contingency Plan

None necessary, revert to previous release behaviour.

Documentation