OLPC Python Environment

Introduction

If you are able to program in Python then you can start building OLPC applications right now. The core tools, Python and GTK, are available on Windows, Macintosh and UNIX. It is not necessary to get Sugar up and running right away unless you want to do something complex using dbus. For most educational applications, you only need to have Sugar for the final testing phases.

Basic Instructions

The following three pages have an outline of getting Sugar running on your OS however they still need more contributors.

• Setting Up a Sugar Development Environment on MacOS X
• Setting Up a Sugar Development Environment on Windows
• Setting Up a Sugar Development Environment on *IX OSes
• Getting started with the Sugar Development Environment in Puppy Linux -- User:Raffy August 17, 2006

If you are a developer with a machine running Fedora Core, then you can download the Sugar environment from here http://hg.fedoraproject.org/hg/olpc/applications/sugar--devel

If you want to develop an application on your own systems, you can download a standard Python install found at http://www.python.org and the PyGTK module from http://www.pygtk.org.

Guidelines

Since the OLPC is rather different from the average PC, we need to keep in mind a set of guidlines while building educational applications.

1. Remember that the end user is a kid.
2. Keep the power consumption low. Avoid animated graphics or provide a way for the user to turn them off.
3. Use simple datastores such as pickle or dbm. For relational databases use SQLite