[Server-devel] XSCE wants to become a framework for the next 10 years

[Tony Anderson]

George, Tim, et al

I can not speak for the server situation in Latin America but OLE Nepal 
upgraded from XS-0.4 to XS-0.6 and added services to it such as Dan's 
Guardian. (Actually during most of that time I was doing it).

I don't think we need to re-open the XO as server issue. Installing the 
school server on an XO does not need to use and should not use the 
Fedora/Sugar build (designed for a client computer).

So far I have not seen a single capability mentioned that cannot be 
readily implemented on XS-0.7 (except running on an ARM since CentOS 
does not yet support it). The importance of XS-0.7 is that it eliminated 
a dependency on Fedora 9. With the build system Daniel Drake put in 
place, it should be easy to upgrade to later releases of CentOS (or 
Fedora).

Again to be brief, I think the need is to add capabilities to XS-0.7 and 
not to redo the XS architecture. I see nothing in the XS-0.7 
architecture that will not be viable for at least the next 10 years.

Tony

On 02/28/2013 07:22 PM, server-devel-request at lists.laptop.org wrote:
> Message: 4
> Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2013 16:16:19 -0500
> From: Sameer Verma<sverma at sfsu.edu>
> To: George Hunt<georgejhunt at gmail.com>
> Cc: XS Devel<server-devel at lists.laptop.org>
> Subject: Re: [Server-devel] XSCE wants to become a framework for the
> 	next 10	years
> Message-ID:
> 	<CAFoGK8FUvMC1AaquXv3bmn-6Mx+tycHkRrW37JOmsFLHO+MyFQ at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> On Thu, Feb 28, 2013 at 4:10 PM, George Hunt<georgejhunt at gmail.com>  wrote:
>> >Tony, et al,
>> >
>> >The group of developers, working on the XSCE, are indeed attempting to build
>> >upon the good work that Daniel Drake did on the XS-0.7. But we are trying to
>> >extract the essential information from the history of the school server up
>> >to this point.
>> >
>> >The XS-0.6, based upon FC4, was released in the 2008 time frame.
>> >Nepal, Australia, Uruguay, perhaps for their own and different reasons,
>> >deviated from this released version 2008-2012.
>> >XS-0.7 was released for use in Nicaragua based upon Centos in early 2012.
>> >
>> >Our analysis of this history has been that the monolithic nature of the
>> >punji, anoconda build process is not helpful.  If the functionality of the
>> >school server could be dropped on top of a current fedora build, all of the
>> >hardware specific configuration would be handled by the general Fedora
>> >community -- our school server software doesn't need to change to accomodate
>> >arm, or x64.
>> >
>> >But as with any basic restructuring, starting from the ground up, we need to
>> >walk before we can run.  Whether it is reinventing the wheel or not --
>> >networking needs to work flawlessly. We have determined that one the the
>> >hardware platforms we need to support is the XO itself. The XO uses
>> >NetworkManager as it's networking frontend, so to be compatible, we have
>> >needed to learn how to configure NM.  Squid, ejabberd, and iptables need to
>> >play in all configurations of network adapters.
> Get rid of NM and replace with scripts?
>
> Sameer
>> >
>> >In addition, if we are thinking for the next 10 years, we wanted a more
>> >modular plugin-like structure for adding additional services.
>> >
>> >So I believe Tony, you are correct, we seem to be "reinventing the wheel".
>> >But it's my hope we are getting this wheel ready to carry a much heavier
>> >weight.  We are hoping that by the third quarter of this year, the XSCE
>> >might be to the point where it is a drop in replacement for XS-0.7. At that
>> >point your good suggestions might be extremely useful.
>> >
>> >We are trying to provide a software framework that is attractive and
>> >flexible enough, so that in the future, the next Nepal, Australia, Uruguay
>> >will not feel the need to go their own way.
>> >
>> >George
>> >