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SyncEvolution 1.2.2 released

Maintenance release with various bug fixes.

* syncevo-dbus-server + ConnMan: fixed “online” detection (BMC #21541, BMC #24587)

SyncEvolution did not recognize any cellular connectivity as
suitable for syncing. The strict check for certain “connected
technology” is unnecessary, anything which makes the computer
“online” should be good enough. So now it just uses the ConnMan
“State” property.

Additional benefit: will continue to work with ConnMan 1.0, which
won’t have the “ConnectedTechnologies” property anymore.

The Bluetooth available check was also (incorrectly) using the
ConnMan API. Now asssume that OBEX/Bluetooth is always available.

  • automatic backups: added INFO messages and fixed dumpData/printChanges (BMC #24619)

    Point out that backups are created (user might be unaware otherwise
    and wonder about the delay), explain why (so that users know how to
    turn it off).

    Turning these backups off with dumpData=0 printChanges=0 had to be
    fixed, backups were always written previously.

  • EDS compatibility: bumped version check for EDS 3.2

    SyncEvolution is known to work with EDS 3.2. Therefore use the
    libebook/ecal/edataserver libs from 3.2 if available, without
    warnings in the –version output. Also happens with inconsistent
    distro setups where the old libs are available and would have been
    prefered by SyncEvolution 1.2.1 even though the old libs no longer
    work with EDS 3.2.

  • GTK-UI: do not accept service config without a username (BMC #23106)

    Instead of creating such a config, an error dialog is shown.

  • GTK-UI: updated translations

  • fixed various compile issues, primarily on Fedora Core 17
    (unistd.h/ssize_t, invoking syncevolution during compilation,
    missing src/dbus/qt/configure-sub.in)

    SyncEvolution is known to not compile with Bluez 4.97. A patch
    for Bluez header files is needed to make them work in C++ again,
    see http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.bluez.kernel/20364

Upgrading from releases before 1.2

Old configurations can still be read. But writing, as it happens
during a sync, must migrate the configuration first. Release 1.2
automatically migrates configurations. The old configurations
will still be available (see “syncevolution –print-configs”) but must
be renamed manually to use them again under their original names with
older SyncEvolution releases.

Source, Installation, Further information

Source snapshots are in
http://downloads.syncevolution.org/syncevolution/sources

i386, lpia and amd64 binaries for Debian-based distributions are available via the “stable” syncevolution.org repository. Add the following entry to your /apt/source.list, then install “syncevolution-evolution”:

  deb http://downloads.syncevolution.org/apt unstable main

These binaries include the “sync-ui” GTK GUI and were compiled for Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (Hardy). Older distributions like Debian 4.0 (Etch) can no longer be supported with precompiled binaries because of missing libraries, but the source still compiles when not enabling the GUI (the default).

The same binaries are also available as .tar.gz and .rpm archives in the download directories. In contrast to 0.8.x archives, the 1.0 .tar.gz archives have to be unpacked and the content must be moved to /usr, because several files would not be found otherwise.

After installation, follow the getting started steps.

2012 01 17 Release Comments (0)

SyncEvolution 1.2.1 released

Maintenance release with various bug fixes.

* GTK UI + config: fix “custom server” setup (BMC #13511)

When the “default” config template (= ScheduleWorld) was downgraded to
“not consumer ready” in SyncEvolution 1.1.0.99.1, setting up a custom
SyncML service in the GTK UI stopped working because the UI wouldn’t
show the “not consumer ready” config.

The problem described above is deterministic and fixed now.
Initially the problem seemed to be random. So perhaps there is
also another, related issue.

  • phone sync: delete<->delete conflict + phone calendar+todo sync (BMC #23744)

    When deleting an item on phone and locally, the next sync failed with
    ERROR messages about “object not found”. Retrying the sync then worked.

  • Nokia: prevent accidental usage of “calendar” or “todo” sources

    Nokia phones use a combined “calendar+todo” source for syncing. The
    “calendar” and “todo” sources also exist because that is where local
    databases are configured.

    In such a setup, syncing always has to use “calendar+todo”. For example,
    to refresh from the Linux desktop to the phone, use:
    –sync refresh-from-server calendar+todo

    To work with items (restore, show local content), use the underlying sources,
    as in:
    –print-items calendar

    It was possible to accidentally sync with the “calendar”. This commit
    prevents that by adding an invalid URI setting to the “calendar” and
    “todo” sources in the Nokia and Ovi templates. Existing configs are not
    touched, so beware when you already have configured your Nokia phone.

  • vCard: X- chat extensions were limited to one instance per kind

    For example, only one Jabber account could be synchronized. This
    was caused by an incomplete definition of the conversion to and from
    vCard.

  • syncevo-dbus-server + phone sync: catch SIGPIPE to avoid premature exit

    Frederik Elwert reported that running a local sync with a phone via
    Bluetooth caused the syncevo-dbus-server to shut down during a sync.
    Explicitly telling the process to ignore the SIGPIPE signal solved that
    problem.

  • syncevo-http-server: support chained SSL certificates

    So far, the file pointed to by –certificate-file had to
    contain the server certificated (signed by a CA known to the client)
    and (optionally) a client certificate. Now the file may also contain
    additional intermediate certificates which will be sent to the client
    (chained certificates).

  • documentation: added glossary and command line conventions sections,
    improved listing of properties, embedd property definitions in man page,
    README and README.html

  • EDS compatibility: fixed inconsistency in libecal check

    The check for the _r variants in libical still used an older max
    version. This might have prevented using them (if not found) or
    could have led to a mixture of old and new libecal in the same
    process (probably crashed).

  • glib: avoid including glib/*.h headers directly

    Recent glib deprecates the direct inclusion of some of its headers,
    in favor of including glib.h. Doing that here whenever possible, so
    perhaps it now compiles on Fedora 17 (untested).

Upgrading from releases before 1.2

Old configurations can still be read. But writing, as it happens
during a sync, must migrate the configuration first. Release 1.2
automatically migrates configurations. The old configurations
will still be available (see “syncevolution –print-configs”) but must
be renamed manually to use them again under their original names with
older SyncEvolution releases.

Source, Installation, Further information

Source snapshots are in
http://downloads.syncevolution.org/syncevolution/sources

i386, lpia and amd64 binaries for Debian-based distributions are available via the “stable” syncevolution.org repository. Add the following entry to your /apt/source.list, then install “syncevolution-evolution”:

  deb http://downloads.syncevolution.org/apt unstable main

These binaries include the “sync-ui” GTK GUI and were compiled for Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (Hardy). Older distributions like Debian 4.0 (Etch) can no longer be supported with precompiled binaries because of missing libraries, but the source still compiles when not enabling the GUI (the default).

The same binaries are also available as .tar.gz and .rpm archives in the download directories. In contrast to 0.8.x archives, the 1.0 .tar.gz archives have to be unpacked and the content must be moved to /usr, because several files would not be found otherwise.

After installation, follow the getting started steps.

2011 11 28 Release Comments (0)

SyncEvolution 1.2 released

The major new feature of the 1.2 release is support for non-SyncML
protocols in general and CalDAV/CardDAV in particular. ActiveSync
support is in development and will be in 1.3. These protocols are
implemented as backends which are combined with other backends by
SyncEvolution in a so called “local sync”. The GTK sync-ui does not
yet support configuring non-SyncML protocols. See the README.rst and
man page for more information on how to use the new feature via the
command line.

Properties not supported by SyncML servers can now be preserved
locally in two-way synchronization (BMC #15030). This depends on
information about what properties a SyncML server supports (”CtCap”),
which is typically not provided by servers. SyncEvolution contains a
copy of that information for Google Contacts (BMC #15029).

Akonadi backend and KWallet support were merged. They are not included
yet in syncevolution.org binaries. To use them compile from source.

The configuration format was updated to solve a conceptual problem
inherited with the legacy property names: the “type” property had
multiple, sometimes conflicting roles. For example, setting the
preferred data format for sync with one peer might have changed the
backend selection for some other peer (BMC #1023). Now
“backend/databaseFormat/syncFormat/forceSyncFormat” replace
“type”. “type” is still accepted by the command line as alias.

Upgrading from releases before 1.2

Old configurations can still be read. But writing, as it happens
during a sync, must migrate the configuration first. Release 1.2
automatically migrates configurations. The old configurations
will still be available (see “syncevolution –print-configs”) but must
be renamed manually to use them again under their original names with
older SyncEvolution releases.

Other changes

  • Using the –sync-property and –source-property command line options is
    optional, just specifying the property assignment is enough.

  • syncevo-http-server was enhanced considerably. See http://syncevolution.org/wiki/http-server-howto

  • support NetworkManager API >= 0.9 (BMC #19470)

  • syncevolution.org binaries: now compatible with Debian Testing/libnotify.so.4 (BMC #22668)

    libnotify is not linked directly into syncevo-dbus-server in the
    syncevolution.org binaries. Instead libnotify.so.1 till .so.4
    (current Debian Testing) are opened opened dynamically and the
    necessary functions are looked up via dlsym(). Not finding the
    libraries or the functions silently disables this notification
    mechanism.

  • Sync mode is recorded when running in SyncML server mode (BMC #2786).

  • syncevo-dbus-server automatically stops when some of its libraries
    are updated and restarts if auto-syncing is on (BMC #14955).

  • Added code for Buteo, mKCal and QtContacts in MeeGo.

    Buteo and mKCal were removed again from MeeGo, so the code
    is obsolete. The QtContacts backend may be still be useful
    to access items via that API, but for syncing on MeeGo
    the normal EDS backend is used since MeeGo reverted back
    to EDS as PIM storage.

  • “databasePassword” source property: lookup failure in keyring (BMC #22937)

    The databasePassword also wasn’t looked up at all when doing item operations
    via the command line.

    When configuring sources for an HTTP server, the config name typically
    is just the context (@foo). When using the config in the HTTP server,
    the config name is the peer inside that context (client@foo). Because
    the GNOME keyring lookup keys for the “databasePassword” (more
    specifically, the object name) contained the full config name which
    was different in both cases, looking up the saved password failed.

    The solution is to normalize the config name (to accomodate for
    different ways of spelling it) and use only the context, with @ as
    before. This will break existing setups where the object name in the
    keyring (incorrectly) includes the full config name. In that case just
    configure the source again to set the password anew.

  • Evolution Calendar: fixed detached recurrence support (BMC #22940)

    When manipulating a meeting series with more than one detached
    recurrence certain sequences of operations could incorrectly fail
    with “UID already exists”.

  • iCalendar 2.0: must set VALUE in EXDATE (part of BMC #22940)

    EXDATE has a VALUE parameter, which wasn’t defined in the XML
    profile. Didn’t seem to matter at all in practice, but wasn’t
    standard-compliant.

  • GTK sync-ui: wrap sync service descriptions (BMC #7199)

    Descriptions of different sync services are not fully visible unless
    word-wrapping gets enabled.

  • CalDAV/CardDAV + local storage: avoid empty properties

    The main motivation for this change is that a recent Apple Calendar
    server rejects vCards with empty BDAY property. Another reason is that
    keeping the data as small as possible is desirable by itself.

    Sending an empty property serves as a hint for the peer that the
    property is supported. This is not necessary when storing an item in a
    backend. Therefore this commit disables empty properties for all
    backends which do not themselves set the m_backendRule Synthesis info
    value.

  • Google Contacts: ensure that first/middle/name are set when storing in EDS (BMC #20864)

    Evolution and the MeeGo UX assume that first/middle/last name are set.
    That is not the case when a contact is created in the Google Contacts
    web interface. Such contacts are sent by Google without the N
    property.

    SyncEvolution now tries to recreate the name components from the FN
    string, by splitting at word boundaries and assuming ”
    ” or “, ” format. Obviously this
    heuristic fails for some locales.

  • Evolution Calendar: fixed error handling for broken TZIDs

  • Sony Ericsson: use ISO-8859-1 for all devices (BMC #14414)

    Passing invalid UTF-8 strings into libecal caused glib to
    abort syncevo-dbus-server.

  • auto sync: show all failed syncs except for temporary network errors (BMC #21888)

    Notifications were meant to be shown for all errors except temporary
    ones. This has never been implemented correctly since the feature was
    introduced: instead of hiding known temporary errors, all errors except
    500 (fatal error) were suppressed.

  • vCard: inline local photo data (BMC #19661)

    Some platforms (Maemo, MeeGo) store photos in separate files. Now SyncEvolution
    efficiently includes that photo data in the generated vCard right before sending
    it to a peer; previously it sent a useless local file:// URI. The Maemo port
    has a less efficient workaround for that which now should be obsolete.

  • syncevo-dbus-server: online status wrong without Network Manager or ConnMan (BMC #21543)

    When neither Network Manager nor ConnMan are running, network presence was “not
    online”. This prevented running automatic syncs.

For developers:

  • modified backend API

    • ClientTestConfig modernized
    • InsertItemResult::m_merged turned from boolean to enum

  • testing and compilation changes; for example, the minimum version of
    libsynthesis is now checked at configure time instead of failing at
    runtime due to missing features in the Synthesis engine

SyncEvolution 1.1.99.7 -> 1.2, 13.10.2011

Some more bug fixes and testing improvements.

  • fixed potential invalid memory access in add<->add conflict handling
  • fixed memory leak in workaround for EDS bug
  • CalDAV/CardDAV: handle ETags without quotation marks (eGroupware)
  • updated README: warning about sync direction moved to –sync option

Source, Installation, Further information

Source snapshots are in
http://downloads.syncevolution.org/syncevolution/sources

i386, lpia and amd64 binaries for Debian-based distributions are available via the “stable” syncevolution.org repository. Add the following entry to your /apt/source.list, then install “syncevolution-evolution”:

  deb http://downloads.syncevolution.org/apt stable main

These binaries include the “sync-ui” GTK GUI and were compiled for Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (Hardy). Older distributions like Debian 4.0 (Etch) can no longer be supported with precompiled binaries because of missing libraries, but the source still compiles when not enabling the GUI (the default).

The same binaries are also available as .tar.gz and .rpm archives in the download directories. In contrast to 0.8.x archives, the 1.0 .tar.gz archives have to be unpacked and the content must be moved to /usr, because several files would not be found otherwise.

After installation, follow the getting started steps.

2011 10 17 Release Comments (0)

SyncEvolution 1.1.99.7 released

Mostly bug fixes again. Some are a bit more intrusive, thus another
pre-release.

Changes

  • syncevolution.org binaries: now compatible with Debian Testing/libnotify.so.4 (BMC #22668)

    libnotify is not linked directly into syncevo-dbus-server in the
    syncevolution.org binaries. Instead libnotify.so.1 till .so.4
    (current Debian Testing) are opened opened dynamically and the
    necessary functions are looked up via dlsym(). Not finding the
    libraries or the functions silently disables this notification
    mechanism.

  • calendar sync: better handling for add<->add conflicts (partly fixes BMC #22783)

    When both sides of a sync have added the same event, the sync must
    determine which one is more recent instead of blindly overwriting
    always the same side. Such conflicts are typically rare except for
    enterprise scenarios where meeting invitiations are processed
    automatically by a groupware (Exchange, Google Calendar/Mail, …)
    and then the attendee status is updated on one side.

    SyncEvolution now does the necessary age comparison and preserves the more
    recent data for most properties. In some properties the data from both
    sides is preserved by concatenating the text (description, location, …).
    It remains to be seen whether that is really desirable. Also, sync statistics
    are slightly off: the incoming item is counted as “added” even though it
    gets turned into an update.

  • item operations: authentication problem for WebDAV when using keyring (BMC #21311)

    The password still wasn’t looked up in the keyring when using
    –import/export/delete-items.

  • “databasePassword” source property: lookup failure in keyring (BMC #22937)

    The databasePassword also wasn’t looked up at all when doing item operations
    via the command line.

    When configuring sources for an HTTP server, the config name typically
    is just the context (@foo). When using the config in the HTTP server,
    the config name is the peer inside that context (client@foo). Because
    the GNOME keyring lookup keys for the “databasePassword” (more
    specifically, the object name) contained the full config name which
    was different in both cases, looking up the saved password failed.

    The solution is to normalize the config name (to accomodate for
    different ways of spelling it) and use only the context, with @ as
    before. This will break existing setups where the object name in the
    keyring (incorrectly) includes the full config name. In that case just
    configure the source again to set the password anew.

  • Evolution Calendar: fixed detached recurrence support (BMC #22940)

    When manipulating a meeting series with more than one detached
    recurrence certain sequences of operations could incorrectly fail
    with “UID already exists”.

  • iCalendar 2.0: must set VALUE in EXDATE (part of BMC #22940)

    EXDATE has a VALUE parameter, which wasn’t defined in the XML
    profile. Didn’t seem to matter at all in practice, but wasn’t
    standard-compliant.

  • GTK sync-ui: wrap sync service descriptions (BMC #7199)

    Descriptions of different sync services are not fully visible unless
    word-wrapping gets enabled.

  • source configs: don’t check “backend” unless it is needed

    When using a config which has sources with a backend type set which is
    not currently available, an error was thrown even if those sources
    weren’t even part of the current operation (for example, syncing
    another source which is currently supported).

  • config migration: avoid name conflicts and auto syncing of old configs (BMC #22691)

    When (auto-)migrating a config, it was possible that a name for the
    peer, say foo.old, was chosen for the renamed config although there
    was already such a config, for example foo.old in ~/.sync4j. Besides
    being confusing for users, this also led to a bug in the code where it
    copied from the older config with the foo.old name.

    The main problem fixed is the disabling of auto syncing
    in the old config. Otherwise it was still used by syncevo-dbus-server
    for syncing, which triggered another auto-migration, ad infinitum…

  • auto syncing: must check whether enabled when looking at unknown URLs (part of BMC #22691)

    “syncURL = insert your URL here” with “autoSync = 0″ did lead to auto
    sync attempts although it wasn’t enabled. A check for “auto syncing
    enabled” was missing for the “unknown transport” case.

  • CalDAV/CardDAV + local storage: avoid empty properties

    The main motivation for this change is that a recent Apple Calendar
    server rejects vCards with empty BDAY property. Another reason is that
    keeping the data as small as possible is desirable by itself.

    Sending an empty property serves as a hint for the peer that the
    property is supported. This is not necessary when storing an item in a
    backend. Therefore this commit disables empty properties for all
    backends which do not themselves set the m_backendRule Synthesis info
    value.

  • Apple CardDAV: apply PHOTO import/export scripts by default

    A recent Apple Calendar server (correctly) rejects the invalid
    PHOTO;TYPE=unknown: property in a vCard. This internal representation
    must be cleared before serializing the field list.

  • for developers: modified backend API

    • ClientTestConfig modernized
    • InsertItemResult::m_merged turned from boolean to enum

  • testing and compilation changes; for example, the minimum version of
    libsynthesis is now checked at configure time instead of failing at
    runtime due to missing features in the Synthesis engine

Source, Installation, Further information

Source snapshots are in
http://downloads.syncevolution.org/syncevolution/sources

i386 and amd64 binaries for Debian-based distributions are available via the “unstable” syncevolution.org repository. Add the following entry to your /apt/source.list, then install “syncevolution-evolution”:

  deb http://downloads.syncevolution.org/apt unstable main

Binaries for lpia will be made available again in the next release.

These binaries include the “sync-ui” GTK GUI and were compiled for Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (Hardy). Older distributions like Debian 4.0 (Etch) can no longer be supported with precompiled binaries because of missing libraries, but the source still compiles when not enabling the GUI (the default).

The same binaries are also available as .tar.gz and .rpm archives in http://downloads.syncevolution.org/syncevolution/evolution. In contrast to 0.8.x archives, the 1.0 .tar.gz archives have to be unpacked and the content must be moved to /usr, because several files would not be found otherwise.

After installation, follow the getting started steps.

2011 09 16 Release Comments (0)

SyncEvolution 1.1.99.6 released

Mostly bug fixes, some improvements in testing and packaging. This
release was tested successfully with DAViCal 0.9.9.4.

Changes

  • CalDAV: fixed incorrect change tracking causing “event not found” (BMC #22329)

  • CalDAV: handle delete<->delete conflict during local sync (BMC #22327)

    If the same event was deleted both locally and in the CalDAV server, syncing
    failed with “event not found”.

  • Google Contacts: ensure that first/middle/name are set when storing in EDS (BMC #20864)

    Evolution and the MeeGo UX assume that first/middle/last name are set.
    That is not the case when a contact is created in the Google Contacts
    web interface. Such contacts are sent by Google without the N
    property.

    SyncEvolution now tries to recreate the name components from the FN
    string, by splitting at word boundaries and assuming ”
    ” or “, ” format. Obviously this
    heuristic fails for some locales.

  • CalDAV: continue despite Google Calendar access problems (see BMC #19484)

    An attempt to work around “403 You don’t have access to change that
    event” errors, perhaps caused by
    http://code.google.com/p/google-caldav-issues/issues/detail?id=38
    The problem is now recorded instead of aborting the sync. The sync
    then ends in a 22001 = “partial failure” error and the operation
    will be retried in the next sync.

  • CalDAV: transform UTC RECURRENCE-ID for Evolution (BMC #22594)

    Evolution showed a meeting twice on the day of a modified recurrence,
    if the meeting series was originally created and modified in Exchange,
    then imported into Google Calendar.

  • CalDAV syncevolution.org binaries now works when libneon.so.27
    or libneon-gnutls.so.27 (Debian) are installed. Previously
    libneon.so.27 was required, which is no longer available in
    Debian Testing.

  • syncevo-dbus-server/gdbus: fixed segfault when asked for properties
    when none are available (BMC #22152)

  • Evolution Calendar: fixed error handling for broken TZIDs

  • Sony Ericsson: use ISO-8859-1 for all devices (BMC #14414)

    Passing invalid UTF-8 strings into libecal caused glib to
    abort syncevo-dbus-server.

  • item operations: authentication problem for WebDAV when using keyring (BMC #21311)

    The password wasn’t looked up in the keyring when using –print-items/import/export/…

  • WebDAV: fixed item operations without configuration (BMC #22164)

    Previously failed with “[ERROR] : virtual read-only configuration node, cannot write
    property webDAVCredentialsOkay = 1″.

  • auto sync: show all failed syncs except for temporary network errors (BMC #21888)

    Notifications were meant to be shown for all errors except temporary
    ones. This has never been implemented correctly since the feature was
    introduced: instead of hiding known temporary errors, all errors except
    500 (fatal error) were suppressed.

  • vCard: inline local photo data (BMC #19661)

    Some platforms (Maemo, MeeGo) store photos in separate files. Now SyncEvolution
    efficiently includes that photo data in the generated vCard right before sending
    it to a peer; previously it sent a useless local file:// URI. The Maemo port
    has a less efficient workaround for that which now should be obsolete.

  • syncevo-dbus-server: online status wrong without Network Manager or ConnMan (BMC #21543)

    When neither Network Manager nor ConnMan are running, network presence was “not
    online”. This prevented running automatic syncs.

  • fixed compile issues with Debian Testing/gcc 4.6.1

Known issues, might still be resolved for the final 1.2

  • syncevolution.org binaries: libnotify1 -> libnotify4 incompatibility (BMC #22668)

    Newer distros no longer have the libnotify.so.1 that syncevolution.org
    binaries depend on. As a workaround it is possible to install the libnotify1
    package from older distro releases.

  • CalDAV: add<->add conflicts (BMC #22669)

    Suppose the same meeting invitation for event UID=FOO is processed in
    both Evolution and Google Calendar. This always happens when the meeting
    invitation emails is sent to Google Mail, then later viewed in Evolution.
    On the Evolution side, the invitation is accepted. In Google Calendar this is
    still open.

    When syncing in that state the sync engine does not recognize that
    both sides have added the same meeting and the “meeting accepted”
    information eventually gets lost.

    As a workaround, always synchronize the calendar before processing
    meeting invitation emails.

Source, Installation, Further information

Source snapshots are in
http://downloads.syncevolution.org/syncevolution/sources

i386 and amd64 binaries for Debian-based distributions are available via the “unstable” syncevolution.org repository. Add the following entry to your /apt/source.list, then install “syncevolution-evolution”:

  deb http://downloads.syncevolution.org/apt unstable main

Binaries for lpia will be made available again in the next release.

These binaries include the “sync-ui” GTK GUI and were compiled for Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (Hardy). Older distributions like Debian 4.0 (Etch) can no longer be supported with precompiled binaries because of missing libraries, but the source still compiles when not enabling the GUI (the default).

The same binaries are also available as .tar.gz and .rpm archives in http://downloads.syncevolution.org/syncevolution/evolution. In contrast to 0.8.x archives, the 1.0 .tar.gz archives have to be unpacked and the content must be moved to /usr, because several files would not be found otherwise.

After installation, follow the getting started steps.

2011 08 18 Release Comments (0)

SyncEvolution for Debian: new maintainer needed

David Bremner, the Debian packager of SyncEvolution, announced that he is looking for a new maintainer to take over that package. If you care about SyncEvolution in Debian and Ubuntu, then please consider taking over.

On this occasion let me thank David Bremner for getting SyncEvolution into Debian and for maintaining it there.

2011 04 30 Comments (0)

Comment spam

Quite a bit of spam accumulated in the site comments. Usually I deleted spam comments within a few days after receiving the comment notification email, but not all spam comments triggered those, so I missed quite a lot. I went back and reviewed all comments and deleted as necessary, so the site should be cleaner now. If I missed anything, please let me know.

In order to combat spam, all comments are now held for review before being posted. This will lead to delays, so we plan to improve the anti-spam measures and remove the need to review comments manually again.

If someone wants to help maintain the site, such help would be highly appreciated! It takes away time that could be spent on improving the software instead…

2011 03 14 Comments (0)

SyncEvolution “Christmas Edition” 1.1.1 released

Maintenance release, in particular improving syncing with phones.
There was a bug that could cause all kinds of weird behavior after
a failed sync with a phone, so updating is highly recommended.

Changes 1.1 -> 1.1.1

  • Synthesis engine: fixed a corruption issue in internal meta data which
    caused duplicates and other problems in a pretty indeterminstic way;
    apparently caused by failed syncs (BMC #11044).

  • Synthesis engine: recurrence rules with end date now sent correctly to phones (BMC #11241).

    The RRULE property was not encoded correctly previously during the
    iCalendar 2.0 -> vCalendar 1.0 conversion. Events with recurrence count
    were okay. Probably also affected SyncML servers without iCalendar 2.0
    support.

    The fix was confirmed to work with Nokia phones. It also helps with Sony Ericsson
    phones, but at least the t700 still has a problem: depending on the phone’s
    time zone, it repeats the event for one day too long (BMC #10092).

  • Synthesis engine: fixed broken time zone information when sending to phone;
    previously that broke sending calendar updates to Nokia phones (BMC #9600).

    iCalendar 2.0 time zone definitions imported from libical were not
    encoded correctly in vCalendar 1.0 items as sent to phones. Nokia
    phones accepted such data when part of a new event, but rejected
    updates of it.

  • Synthesis engine: shorter TZIDs, might help N900 calendar (BMC #6680).

    The shorter TZIDs will be included in iCalendar 2.0 data exported
    by libsyntesis and thus SyncEvolution. This change is motivated primarily
    by the observation that the N900 calendar storage can handle TZID=,
    but not TZID=/softwarestudio.org/Tzfile/.

  • ScheduleWorld: disable configuration template because service has shut down.

    The template is only hidden from the GTK sync-ui, but remains in SyncEvolution
    for the time being because it is referenced in several places.

  • Evolution CalDAV: added workaround for “must sync twice” (BMC #10265)

    The Evolution CalDAV backend seems to update its data when closing the
    database, not when opening it. As a result, syncevolution had to be run
    twice to see all data changes. The workaround is to open the database
    twice at the start of the sync. This is done for all calendar databases,
    regardless of which backend they use, in case that some other (yet unknown)
    backend needs the same workaround.

  • GTK sync-ui: workaround for “Sync Now” button not reacting to online
    status changed (BMC #9949).

  • Changed slow sync handling. Some users have complained about getting
    duplicated contacts (BMC #10081). The exact reason is not known (no
    useful logs provided yet), but it might be due to using “duplicate”
    as resolution strategy during slow syncs.

    This caused slightly different contacts to be duplicated instead of
    merging the two copies, reasoning that “no data loss” is better than
    “duplicates”. This release switches to a mode where the engine
    tries harder to avoid duplicates by merging data if modification
    time stamps are available for contacts (usually they are). When fields
    differ, the more recent data is kept.

  • convert absolute alarm back to relative (BMC #11233)

    Experiments show that at least Nokia phones (and thus perhaps also
    Mobical.com) interpret a fixed alarm as “repeat alarm with the same
    relative offset as on first occurrence”. The same transformation to
    relative alarm times is applied whenever the transformation to
    absolute alarm is enabled for a peer.

  • Sony Ericsson: enable conversion to absolute alarm times (BMC #10092)

    Like Nokia and Mobical.net, Sony Ericsson phones also seem to be unable
    to deal with relative alarm times – verified with t700.

  • Sony Ericsson C510: workaround for SyncML violation

    The phone does not sent identifiers for the target database;
    using the source identifier as fallback allows a sync to
    run.

  • Fixed a regression affecting users who had created a config
    with SyncEvolution < 1.0. Using the config worked once, then
    failed with “No configuration for … found”. Users must
    manually remove the empty “peers” directory inside their
    affected configuration, the fix only makes configs without that
    directory usable again (BMC #9381).

  • Removed obsolete workaround for older mKCal calendar storage.

  • Fixed error message in QtContacts backend.
  • Same SYNCEVOLUTION_DEBUG code as in master branch.
  • Some updates to synccompare, including a workaround for a Perl
    bug seen on Debian Testing with Perl 5.10.1-16 (Perl panic).
  • Fix compilation of syncevo-dbus-server with libnotify 0.7.0 (BMC #10453).
  • Fixed compilation on Debian GNU/Hurd (no MAX_PATH, Mac OS X confusion).

Source, Installation, Further information

Source snapshots are in
http://downloads.syncevolution.org/syncevolution/sources

i386, amd64 and lpia binaries for Debian-based distributions are available via the “stable” syncevolution.org repository. Add the following entry to your /apt/source.list, then install “syncevolution-evolution”:

  deb http://downloads.syncevolution.org/apt stable main

These binaries include the “sync-ui” GTK GUI and were compiled for Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (Hardy). Older distributions like Debian 4.0 (Etch) can no longer be supported with precompiled binaries because of missing libraries, but the source still compiles when not enabling the GUI (the default).

The same binaries are also available as .tar.gz and .rpm archives in http://downloads.syncevolution.org/syncevolution/evolution. In contrast to 0.8.x archives, the 1.0 .tar.gz archives have to be unpacked and the content must be moved to /usr, because several files would not be found otherwise.

After installation, follow the getting started steps.

2010 12 26 Release Comments (0)

SyncEvolution 1.1 released

SyncEvolution 1.1

An incremental update, resolving issues where the fixes would have
been too intrusive for a 1.0.x release. It replaces 1.0.x as the
officially supported stable version.

Compatibility with Nokia phones was improved. Some new features were also
included (command line options for manipulating items, backends for MeeGo PIM
storages).

Details:

  • bug fix in sync-ui: wrong direction of one-way data transfers with devices (BMC #7091)
  • bug fix in syncevo-dbus-server: incorrect Presence status after config change (BMC #8453)
    Shows up in sync-ui as “‘Sync Now’ button active after creating a config while offline”.
  • sync-ui (GTK version): app is now listed as “SyncEvolution (GTK)” under “Office”
  • Nokia phones: avoid data loss in two-way sync due to X-EVOLUTION-UI-SLOT (BMC #2566)
  • Nokia phones: alarm times in UTC, sending PHOTO (BMC #1657, #5860)
  • included all phone templates submitted to syncevolution.org Wiki (BMC #5727)
  • syncevo-phone-config: set consumerReady in output, more useful for Wiki (BMC #3803)
  • workaround for D-Bus timeouts in EDS libecal/libebook (BMC #4026)
  • added generic command line options for importing, exporting, updating, listing
    and deleting items in the different backends
  • added backends for mKCal and QtContacts (MeeGo PIM storage),
    meant to be used for manipulating this data on the command line
  • enhanced D-Bus interface (BMC #3558, #3559, #3560, #3562, #3563, #7761, #7766)
  • the command line tool now warns when running against a different D-Bus daemon (BMC #3563)
  • creating and configuring sources in a context (without peer-specific
    properties) is now supported
  • improved documentation: README.rst, man page, and –help output
  • fixed some compile issues (BMC #6367), improved nightly testing

Source, Installation, Further information

Source snapshots are in
http://downloads.syncevolution.org/syncevolution/sources

i386, amd64 and lpia binaries for Debian-based distributions are available via the “stable” syncevolution.org repository. Add the following entry to your /apt/source.list, then install “syncevolution-evolution”:

  deb http://downloads.syncevolution.org/apt stable main

These binaries include the “sync-ui” GTK GUI and were compiled for Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (Hardy). Older distributions like Debian 4.0 (Etch) can no longer be supported with precompiled binaries because of missing libraries, but the source still compiles when not enabling the GUI (the default).

The same binaries are also available as .tar.gz and .rpm archives in http://downloads.syncevolution.org/syncevolution/evolution. In contrast to 0.8.x archives, the 1.0 .tar.gz archives have to be unpacked and the content must be moved to /usr, because several files would not be found otherwise.

After installation, follow the getting started steps.

2010 10 26 Release Comments (0)

SyncEvolution status update + 1.0.99.7 available

SyncEvolution 1.0.99.7, the release candidate for 1.1, is available for testing. Company supported development shifts towards other areas like local synchronization and non-SyncML protocols, so now would be a good time for contributors to step in and help improve the SyncML part or work on non-SyncML protocols.

For those not familiar with the project, SyncEvolution synchronizes
personal information management (PIM) data like contacts, calenders,
tasks, and memos using the SyncML information synchronization standard.
Up to and including 0.9.2, a third-party SyncML server was required. In
1.0, SyncEvolution itself is able to act as a SyncML server, both via
HTTP and Bluetooth (direct sync with phones).

SyncEvolution partly spare time project again

Before talking about the next release(s), first a word from our sponsors… ;-) Although Intel continues to support the development and is still interested in some things that it has to offer, some part of the work now has to be done in spare time activities again.

After Moblin and Maemo merged into MeeGo, Nokia made the code they had developed for the upcoming Maemo Harmattan release available as open source ((Buteo)[http://wiki.meego.com/Buteo]). For various, mostly non-technical reasons, this Buteo framework was chosen for MeeGo. This was announced by Sunil Saxena at OSCON. More information about Buteo and a technical comparison with SyncEvolution can be found in my LinuxCon 2010 talk.

MeeGo Netbook continues to use Evolution and SyncEvolution, but this is considered legacy code which needs to be replaced at some point. Therefore everything related to the GTK sync-ui and SyncML is in maintenance mode.

On the other hand, thanks to the generous contributions by Intel and Synthesis, the existing code already supports local synchronization with phones and arguably is in a very usable state. It is up to the open source community to make use of this functionality. There isn’t that much left to do: continue testing with additional phones, some workarounds for known issues with peers, etc.

If you are a developer who was holding back because everything seemed to move forward automatically anyway, now is a good time to become active. The issue tracker contains more than enough ideas for features and improvements which currently don’t have an owner.

KDE + Akonadi

Most relevant for those users who didn’t want to use Evolution is certainly the progress made in the Google Summer of Code project by Dinesh Said (student) and Sascha Peilicke (mentor). I reviewed the first set of patches and look forward to merging them.

SyncEvolution 1.1

SyncEvolution 1.0.1 was strictly a bug fix release. For 1.1, the goal is to include some features that may be relevant for KDE and Genesis (D-Bus interface improvements) and address as much of the issues reported by users for direct synchronization with some phones.

1.1 also happens to add backends for QtContacts and KCalExtended (now called mkcal). These are the core PIM storage engines in MeeGo. The goal is not to synchronize them (that’s what Buteo is for), but rather offer a command line tool for manipulating PIM data automatically. New command line options (–import/export/print-items/delete-items) were added for that. They also work with most other backends, in particular Evolution and the Maemo 5 calendar.

Prerelease 1.0.99.7 is available for testing. It is considered a release candidate for 1.1. The rpm-style x.99.y numbering scheme replaces the “beta” and “alpha” parts in older version numbers. 1.0.99.7 can be downloaded from http://downloads.syncevolution.org/syncevolution/evolution/ as .rpm or .tar.gz and installed as .deb from the unstable repository.

Details:

  • bug fix in sync-ui: wrong direction of one-way data transfers with devices (BMC #7091)
  • sync-ui (GTK version): app is now listed as “SyncEvolution (GTK)” under “Office”
  • Nokia phones: avoid data loss in two-way sync due to X-EVOLUTION-UI-SLOT (BMC #2566)
  • Nokia phones: alarm times in UTC, sending PHOTO (BMC #1657, #5860)
  • included all phone templates submitted to syncevolution.org Wiki (BMC #5727)
  • syncevo-phone-config: set consumerReady in output, more useful for Wiki (BMC #3803)
  • workaround for D-Bus timeouts in EDS libecal/libebook (MBC #4026)
  • added generic command line options for importing, exporting, updating, listing
    and deleting items     in the different backends
  • added backends for mKCal and QtContacts (MeeGo PIM storage),
    meant to be used for manipulating this data on the command line
  • enhanced D-Bus interface (BMC #3558, #3559, #3560, #3562, #3563, #7761, #7766)
  • the command line tool now warns when running against a different D-Bus daemon (BMC #3563)
  • creating and configuring sources in a context (without peer-specific
    properties) is now supported
  • improved documentation: README.rst, man page, and –help output
  • fixed some compile issues (BMC #6367), improved nightly testing

SyncEvolution after 1.1

Local synchronization between two SyncEvolution backends is already available on a branch. It’ll allow synchronization with peers which do not support SyncML. My pet project will be to add support for the AVM FritzBox’s address book.

Others have expressed an interest in adding CalDAV and Exchange Web Service support. The future improvements in core SyncEvolution are meant to make that possible.

2010 10 01 Comments (0)