Activity packaging

[Bernie Innocenti]

On Mon, 2010-07-05 at 16:20 +0200, Tomeu Vizoso wrote:

> Sorry about the confusion, these questions were about the move from xo
> bundles to packages :(

Ah! Communication FAIL! :)

Ok, I think the requirements for activity bundles could be:

1) Support multiple CPU architectures

2) Support multiple distros (and different versions of same distro)

3) Centralized build cluster (submit one source package, get multiple
   binary packages)

4) Support inter-bundle dependencies
   (e.g.: GCompris + voices, OOo4Kids + dictionaries)

5) Support activity <-> OS dependencies (e.g.: espeak for Speak,
   squeak for etoys...)

6) Work with any programming language (setup.py is python-centric)

7) Easy to learn for activity writers without too much distro-hacking
experience


These requirements would fit well both rpm and deb, with OpenSUSE Build
Service or their native build clusters. To obtain (2) and (7), we might
want to wrap the native packages with a distro-neutral meta-format,
similar to the current activity.info files.

I don't know the details yet, but I guess this is pretty much what
Aleksey is doing with his 0sugar redesign.

I think switching to a native package format is essential: currently,
both the Fedora and Ubuntu teams are spending a lot of time to
re-packaging just a few activities, resulting in duplicated effort and
increased "time-to-market" for activities.

-- 
   // Bernie Innocenti - http://codewiz.org/
 \X/  Sugar Labs       - http://sugarlabs.org/