Rename notebook.py: conflicts with Jupyter

We are wasting our time changing file names and imports to avoid system packages. It is a never-ending task, and impossible to avoid future conflict. There is an underlying problem; the import path resolution for a Sugar activity is wrong.

An interactive Python session or Python script run from a command line do not show a conflict; the local module or file is used rather than the system package. Something is different between the normal Python environment and the environment of an activity within Sugar.

Other examples where we have been doing this are;

Speak activity, import espeak https://github.com/sugarlabs/speak/commit/86cfd1bcff150cee1c705e151253c63bfb483e5a
Jukebox, import player https://github.com/sugarlabs/jukebox-activity/commit/c913a7b0803c25febc6787e63e7392bd52ca2094
Maze, import player https://github.com/sugarlabs/maze-activity/commit/776b61fde7b53ca352081c47136b7e6e5476a911

So can we instead investigate and fix the underlying problem in Sugar or the toolkit?

Here is sys.path at the start of the Activity.__init__ method:

[
'/usr/bin',
'/usr/lib/python2.7',
'/usr/lib/python2.7/plat-x86_64-linux-gnu',
'/usr/lib/python2.7/lib-tk',
'/usr/lib/python2.7/lib-old',
'/usr/lib/python2.7/lib-dynload',
'/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages',
'/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages',
'/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/gst-0.10',
'/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/gtk-2.0',
'/usr/share/sugar/activities/Maze.activity',
]

Here is sys.path in an interactive Python shell started from the Terminal activity bash prompt;

[
'',
'/usr/lib/python2.7',
'/usr/lib/python2.7/plat-x86_64-linux-gnu',
'/usr/lib/python2.7/lib-tk',
'/usr/lib/python2.7/lib-old',
'/usr/lib/python2.7/lib-dynload',
'/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages',
'/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages',
'/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/gst-0.10',
'/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/gtk-2.0',
]

Comparing them we get;

--- INTERACTIVE   2017-03-27 17:23:16.238006463 +1100
+++ ACTIVITY      2017-03-27 17:23:31.701887135 +1100
@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
 [
-'', 
+'/usr/bin', 
 '/usr/lib/python2.7', 
 '/usr/lib/python2.7/plat-x86_64-linux-gnu', 
 '/usr/lib/python2.7/lib-tk', 
@@ -9,4 +9,5 @@
 '/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages', 
 '/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/gst-0.10', 
 '/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/gtk-2.0', 
+'/usr/share/sugar/activities/Maze.activity', 
 ]

Why is the first element of sys.path changed from '' to /usr/bin? Is it because we now call every activity through /usr/bin/sugar-activity?

Why is the activity directory added to the end of sys.path, and not the beginning? See line 117 of bin/sugar-activity

Would it be more correct for sugar-activity to replace /usr/bin/ with the bundle path rather than add the bundle path to the end?

sugarlabs / Pippy

Rename notebook.py: conflicts with Jupyter #45