Maintaining activity web information

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All activity information used to be on wiki.laptop.org, information for hundreds of activities. Now that http://activities.sugarlabs.org/ and http://git.sugarlabs.org/ are set up, activity pages on wiki.laptop.org are more historical and for discussion.

This page describes the information that used to be on wiki.laptop.org and how to update it.

New activities

  1. Develop your activity (hereafter referred to as My Thingy)
  2. Host it on sugarlabs.org, see http://git.sugarlabs.org
  3. Maintain a small page on wiki.laptop.org for the activity containing only {{External activity information}}
{{External activity information
  | download=http://addons.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addon/''NNN''
  | source=http://git.sugarlabs.org/projects/''projname''
  | wiki=http://sugarlabs.org/go/''Wiki page''
}}
  1. Create a little fragment of wiki markup called "Activities/My Thingy (latest)" for it and transclude this in Activities/All with {{:Activities/My Thingy (latest)}}


Existing activities on wiki.laptop.org

Migrating to sugarlabs.org

See How to migrate from OLPC.

1. Add {{Activity migrated to sl.o}} to the top of the activity's page on wiki.laptop.org. A quick example: 

{{Activity migrated to sl.o
  | addons=http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addon/''NNN''
  | git=http://git.sugarlabs.org/projects/''projname''
  | homepage=http://sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/''Wiki_page''
}}

2. Delete all of the wiki page info that duplicates info on sugarlabs.org. LIFE IS TOO SHORT to waste time failing to maintain duplicate information! Unless you are signing up to maintain three sets of pages forever, get rid of it now.

Some deletion candidates:

You can leave {{OBX activity|your icon}} at the top to show your icon. TODO: add this to {{Activity migrated to sl.o}} so all can be axed.

  • Semantic activity information at the bottom that generates "Facts about Page"
    • |icon= — duplicates {{OBX activity}} info
    • |genre= — info on your addons page
    • |short description — just noise
    • |contact person — not sure
    • |i18n= — duplicates Pootle info anyway
    • |bundle URL= — duplicates info on addons page
    • |activity version= — duplicates info on the addons page and its "See All Versions" page
    • |releases=8.2.0 — duplicates info on addons page and its "See All Versions" page

You should leave | activity group if your activity is in one, since that identifies activities in Activity groups that were set up for release 8.2.0's Software update.

You can click 'Edit with form' and blank out the obsolete fields, or click 'Edit' and remove the lines from within the template's {{Activity page}} and {{Activity bundle}}

3. If the activity is in an activity group such as Activities/G1G1, you must continue to maintain its #Fragments for activity groups so that Software update still works.

Maintaining your wiki pages

As you continue development of your activity you need to update your web pages on wiki.laptop.org

Fragment maintenance

  • Should your activity be invited to be a part of an Activity group, the activity group's maintainer can transclude your activity's fragment in the appropriate pages such as Activities/G1G1/8.2, Activities/G1G1, etc.
  • Once the latest version no longer works for a particular release or stream, create a separate fragment for that, such as "Activities/8.2/My Thingy (8.2)" and the activity group's maintainer can transclude that fragment in the specific release's page (in this example Activities/G1G1/8.2).

See #Software update below.


More on activity web pages

If you don't use the Sugar Labs web infrastructure for your activity, you should continue to maintain a detailed wiki page for it on wiki.laptop.org.

Do not use Creating an activity and its buttons to create your page, alas they are out-of-date. Instead, copy what you understand from an existing activity's page. TODO: Need to create an acceptable simple template

It should be in Category:Activities
Otherwise no one will find it!
It must have semantic information in it.
Pages in Category:Activities get an '[Edit with form]' tab button, you should click this and fill in information about your activity. This will ensure your activity will show up in pages like Activity queries.
  • You can use the activity "OBX" (OLPC Box) templates such as {{OBX_activity}} to display attractive badges for it, but this will mean more stuff you have to keep up to date.
  • It can have screenshots, etc.

Software update

The Software update Sugar Control Panel will consult a series of web pages to find the most recent version for the release the laptop is running, and will install or update to that version. This requires that

  1. the right web pages exist
  2. the web pages have the information in the right machine-readable format4

Your own activity

You can mention a URL to contact in its activity.info file, see Activity_bundles. That can be a fragment for it on the web site.

Activity groups

Laptops in the G1G1 program (and possibly country deployments) are configured to install a set of activities known as an Activity group.

Do not add your activity to a group, except perhaps Activities/Joyride. The decision as to what activities and collections belong in a group is not yours to make!

Fragments for activity groups

Activities in the activity groups are set up as follows. They all use the template {{Activity-oneline}}, which creates the correct HTML for the Activity microformat.

Name Description Sample
Activities/My Thingy (latest) This is the latest version of your activity available. It should match the primary information from '[Edit with form]' on your activity's web page. Activities/Etoys (latest)
Activities/My Thingy (8.2) This is version of your activity that works with release 8.2.0. If that version is identical to the latest, then you can make it a #REDIRECT page to the latest. The moment your latest version no longer works with 8.2 you need to maintain this separately. Activities/Etoys (8.2)

You don't need a fragment for earlier releases than 8.2.0 since they did not have the Software update feature. You can present these earlier versions on your activity's web page.

Other bits and pieces

Several activities seem to have a page "Activities/My Thingy" (with no version in parentheses). This seems to be unused, and is often a redirect to an unused "Projects/My Thingy" using {{Activity-summary}} template (obsolete?!). TODO: KILL THESE

Things to check

If an activity is in an activity group

Only a release or deployment manager can decide an activity is in an activity group such as G1G1. if it is, then:


A better way

There's way too much update here!

See Semantic_MediaWiki#For activities and Semantic_MediaWiki/Activities for a better approach.

  • The hard maintenance of Activities/All should be retired in favor of a query for all downloadable activities.
  • [Edit with form] should produce the Activity microformat directly on the activity page
  • the [Add another] version button should either create NO properties at all, or create separate "earlier activity version/bundle/software release" properties so there's no ambiguity about what is the latest activity version/bundle URL/software release
    • This could be a <noinclude fragment.
  • the OBX badges should fill in with semantic info if present
  • still have to maintain "Activities/My Thingy (8.2)" fragment separately, even though the info is in the activity's web page.
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