I posted issues for each indicating the results of the tests.
Tony
On 04/19/2017 08:50 PM, Walter Bender wrote:
Do you have the details re the broken activities?
regards.
-walter
On Wed, Apr 19, 2017 at 1:30 AM, Tony Anderson <tony_ander...@usa.net
<mailto:tony_ander...@usa.net>> wrote:
I spent the last two plus days testing the 137 activities with
repositories in github/sugarlabs.
Of these, 103 work on Ubuntu 16.04 sucrose. This leaves 34 which
do not work.
The biggest problem is version control. Most of these activities
were placed in github during GCI early in 2016. The two main
contributers apparently were unaware of the activity version
number in activity.info <http://activity.info>. As a result, even
after upgrading to GTK3 (sugar3), the version number was unchanged
from the original taken from ASLO. This caused a lot of lost time
as a test on the version in ASLO failed only to find that the
version in github worked.
In many cases the activity version shown to users of ASLO is not
the most recent version (and, indeed, is a non-working version
although there is a working version available). The most recent
version as the result of some quirk in procedure or software is
available by the 'view older versions' link. At the top of that
screen is the warning: Be careful with old versions.
Try to imagine the reaction of a Sugar user who downloads an
activity from ASLO which fails to start. I can't think of anything
more likely to turn off a learner.
It was possible to get several working by obtaining a missing
component or in case of the MaMaMedia activities, to remove
reference to abiword (losing the integral lessons). In other cases
the GCI contributors failed to complete the upgrade to GTK3 which
has the property that it is all or nothing. So in several cases,
the activity fails because of an indirect or overlooked reference
to gobject. One concern is activities based on a screen-size of
1200x900. One game activity is unplayable because essential
controls are off the screen (1024x768).
As a community we need to come up with standards and procedures
for creating and maintaining activities in github.
Presumably, this is managed by an Activity Team. While there
are many registered members and owners, many of them are not
active at the moment. The website description of the Activity Team
is obsolete (dates from 2014
Currently someone who wants to contribute an activity registers
with the developer hub on ASLO. This request is answered by email
similar to the procedure for joining an mail list. How is that to
be handled now.
It appears that most of the changes made by GCI contributors were
done by direct git commits. However, more generally, work on an
activity would be done on a clone to later be merged through the
PR process. As now, actual release of an activity to ASLO is done
by someone other than the developer. So one could imagine a
process where a responsible member of the Activity Team would
generate a bundle with setup.py and install the bundle as the most
recent version on ASLO with an updated version number.
Currently, ASLO displays information about the activity that is
not available in the bundle itself such as the developer, summary,
description, 'works with', release notes, home page, and
repository link. Perhaps the standard should be to include this
information in the bundles activity.info <http://activity.info> so
the ASLO page could be generated by examination of the bundle. The
'works with' needs to be expanded to show which platforms are
supported. In addition, it should show specific restrictions. A
classic is the level activity which requires an XO with an
accelerometer. Any other Sugar user should pass. Others require
special hardware such as a midi connection, a makeymakey or gogo
board, or Butia components.
Localization also needs some attention. The setup.py enables a
developer to generate a master Pot file while building a bundle
for release to ASLO. That is probably the limit of the developer's
responsibility. However, existing activities over time have
developed localization for many languages. Changes to the messages
will need new translations. Perhaps the developer can use diff to
find differences in the Pot and to eliminate un-needed changes and
test that new messages are passed through. This could enable
prompt release of a new version without waiting for the
localization team to provide translations for dozens of languages.
Tony
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--
Walter Bender
Sugar Labs
http://www.sugarlabs.org
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