Maintaining activity web information

From OLPC
Revision as of 20:35, 10 February 2009 by Skierpage (talk | contribs) (fix example)
Jump to navigation Jump to search


Pencil.png NOTE: The contents of this page are not set in stone, and are subject to change!

This page is a draft in active flux ...
Please leave suggestions on the talk page.

Pencil.png
  1. Develop your activity (hereafter referred to as My Thingy)
  2. Host it on sugarlabs.org
  3. Create a web page for it here on wiki.laptop.org
    • in Category:Activities
    • with semantic information from 'Edit with form]'
    • if you like, with the attractive "OBX badges"
  4. Create a little fragment called "Activities/My Thingy (latest)" for it and transclude this in Activities/All with {{:Activities/My Thingy (latest)}}

As you continue development of your activity you need to update the web pages in steps 3 and 4. Additionally:

  • Should it be invited to be a part of an Activity group, create similar fragments "Activities/8.2/My Thingy (latest)" and someone else will transclude this in the appropriate page 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)"

This page describes the web page maintenance in more detail.

Your activity's web page

Do not use Creating an activity and its buttons to create your page, alas they are out-of-date.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 format

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 activities

Here seems to be the way activities in the activity groups are set up. They all use the template {{Activity-oneline}}

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.

  • [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.

Migrating activities to SugarLabs

Developers are moving many activities to SugarLabs infrastructure, see How to migrate from OLPC and Activity status.

However, as of February 2009 the sugarlabs wiki does not have Semantic MediaWiki extension nor does it host any of the Activity group URLs. So activities in Activity groups probably still need to maintain web information on wiki.laptop.org.

After migrating to SugarLabs infrastructure, the elements you need to update are the URLs for XO bundles, source code, and localization.

  • On the activities web page, click [Edit with form]:
  • In activity lists such as Activities/All and/or fragments such as "Activities/My Thingy (latest)":
    • update the activity template fields activity_bundle, activity_source, and i18n