New update.1 build 696

[C. Scott Ananian]

On Wed, Mar 5, 2008 at 10:21 AM, Bert Freudenberg <bert at freudenbergs.de> wrote:
>  On Mar 5, 2008, at 16:08 , C. Scott Ananian wrote:
>  > Yes, at the moment we are still installing necessary RPMs for all of
>  > the supported activities.  At some point, not soon, we might gradually
>  > try to remove these one by one to make activities more self-contained,
>  > and remove the artificial distinction between OLPC-supported
>  > activities and activities created by the community.  We won't be able
>  > to do that until we've got a robust activity updater which supports
>  > sharing common files between activities, etc.  (See trac #4951).
>
>  I'm not entirely sure what you are suggesting here.
>
>  The XO software is a platform, supporting a few select programming
>  environments, as detailed in the spec I linked above. These do not
>  have to be provided by the activities. The activities *are* self-
>  contained if they only depend on these runtime environments, just
>  like they depend on the X11 library, D-Bus, the Linux kernel etc.
>  without having to include those.

Right.  Again, this is a policy question; I wasn't specifically
talking about eToys.  There are a number of activities which depend on
one or more RPMs in the base build.  At the moment our policy is (more
or less) "include 'em all, in case someone wants to install that
activity".  At some point we might be more selective about including
RPMs in the base build, especially if they are large and infrequently
used.  If we have committed to including a squeak environment in the
base build (you didn't actually link to the spec you cited; I believe
you anyway, I don't need to be convinced) then obviously it would not
be on the cutting block.

>  >>  Nevertheless I would hope that Etoys (as well as TurtleArt and
>  >>  TamTam) would come pre-installed on a "learning machine".
>  >
>  > I believe Walter is so urging countries.  That's a policy question for
>  > Walter, not a technical question about the builds.
>
>  Well, as Ben commented on the ticket, there is no technical reason to
>  have Chat, Write, Record, Paint etc. in the base build, either.

Fair point.  It's not my decision to make, anyway.  You need to
convince the Product Manager.  I don't think there are strong reasons
to include or not include them ("consistency" isn't a strong reason,
and no deployment is actually clamoring for their removal) so I tend
to think things will be left as they are.
 --scott

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