Sugar on Windows

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Revision as of 06:53, 2 June 2006 by 86.140.142.125 (talk) (It needs to be a straightforward installation, not a module building maze!)
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For the timebeing, this is NOT going to be a one-click install process. At the very least you will need to install Python and PyGTK separately. Windows support for GTK is a bit confusing with multiple versions, some with missing libraries which have to be sourced from other sites. And then there is GECKO. And finally, the SUGAR environment that is built on all of it.

However, if you can build a pure Python application that uses a simple GUI, i.e. easy to translate into PyGTK, and does not have heavy dependencies, then it will be easy to port into SUGAR. Get your proof of concept up and running, fix the major issues and then ask for help to port it to SUGAR.


For me, and, who knows, maybe for some other people as well, this is like a mountain wall of learning above what I know already.

I have recently heard of Python and have just become aware that something called PyGTK exists. What is GTK? What is GECKO? GUI is graphical user interface, I know.

If it all gets into one of those open source website typical get this tar and that z and use this utility obtainable from somewhere else and this version of Windows and that version and so on, it just becomes a task which is a quantum leap above my knowledge and abilities.

If one buys software packages for Windows from places like http://www.serif.co.uk then one simply installs them and if there is a software patch it is downloadable from the internet as a .exe and one simply runs it. One then starts to use the software. It seems to me, possibly unfairly, that at least some open source projects are all tar this and z something that and needing to have been doing these advanced operating system things for some time.

What is it that means that OLPC could not supply the Sugar development system with all the underlying parts like Python in one easy to install .exe installation file?

Once people can get the Sugar environment up and running we could try to get applications up and running. Yet if having the Sugar environment means that one needs all of the background knowledge about operating systems and building up environments from modules and needing to have all of the unpacking tools and so on, then it will not be something in which everyone can participate, each at his or her own level of ability.