evolution-kolab and android sync

[Christian Hilberg]

Hi Jeroen,

Am Mittwoch 02 Mai 2012, um 23:01:25 schrieb Jeroen van Meeuwen:
> On Wednesday, May 02, 2012 05:32:08 PM Christian Hilberg wrote:
> > If anyone wants to test evolution-kolab, I urge them to carefully read
> > the evolution-kolab user manual (available under [0]). Though it was
> > written for version 2.30, almost all of the information therein still
> > holds true for version 3.4.x.
> > 
> 
> Hi Christian,
> 
> I've built evolution-kolab-3.4.1 packages for Fedora 17,

Congrats - that means you're halfway there. :-)

> but I have trouble completely configuring my Kolab account.
> 
> - Kolab Account list is empty,

True. There is a new feature planned but not yet implemented which will
allow you to configure a mail account for a Kolab IMAP server and re-use
that data when configuring a calendar or address book. The re-use of this
data is not yet implemented, only the GUI widgets are there.

> - Kolab Server input field is set to my local fqdn,

One bug to kill. This will be cleaned up (it is more an annoyance than a bug,
really, it is a leftover greeting from 2.30 era).

> - The User ID input field is set to

Kolab Server input field as well as the ones for User ID need to be cleared
and manually set to the desired values. Sorry for these inconveniences, we're
working on that.

> - Server PIM folders list is empty,

Once the mail account data re-use feature is implemented, this list can be
populated by querying the server. This should make setting up evolution-kolab
much less painful. In Evolution/E-D-S 2.30, infrastructure was missing to fully
implement that. In the 3.5.x series of evolution-kolab, this missing feature
will be implemented.

> Supplying the information manually allows me to add an address book, but fails 
> to allow me to retrieve any contacts.

Once you've entered and saved the information, Evolution as well as E-D-S need
to be restarted, as the user manual says. Please be sure to enter the full IMAP
path to the folder you want to use, but without the leading slash (like
INBOX/Contacts or INBOX/Calendar). If you find you're having a typo in the IMAP
path (it cannot be changed later on), just delete the configured PIM folder
(e.g. via context menu). This will delete configuration data only. It will not
delete anything on the server.
  Most of these quirks result from limitations we were facing in Evolution / E-D-S 2.30,
but which do no longer exist. Work is underway to improve evolution-kolab
in exactly these areas.

> Selecting said address book gives me an invalid source error, just like 
> attempting to delete the address book;

Yep, sadly so. Please make sure to restart Evo _and_ E-D-S, as the user manual
mandates. It should work from then on. If under a GNOME session, please make sure
that the factory processes which comprise E-D-S are really restarted, since GNOME
likes to keep them alive (which is why I do testing under XFCE mostly for time
being).
  When configuring the Kolab mail account, you should see all folders being
displayed. After restart of Evo / E-D-S, you should no longer see PIM folders
in the email view. This is the same thing,

> > [kanarip at albert evolution-kolab (master #%)]$ evolution 2>&1 | tee
> > evolution.log
> > 
> > (evolution:31039): libebook-WARNING **: e_book_client_new: Cannot get book 
> > from factory: Invalid source
> > 
> > (evolution:31039): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: g_object_get_valist: object
> > class `EBookShellSidebar' has no property named `folder-tree'
> 
> and attempting to get to the Kolab Folder Properties on said address book 
> gives me an assertion failure;
> 
> > (evolution:31039): evolution-mail-CRITICAL **: em_folder_tree_get_selected:
> > assertion `EM_IS_FOLDER_TREE (folder_tree)' failed
> > 
> > (evolution:31039): evolution-mail-CRITICAL **:
> > em_folder_tree_store_root_selected: assertion `folder_tree != NULL' failed
> > 
> > (evolution:31039): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_object_unref: assertion
> > `G_IS_OBJECT (object)' failed
> > **
> > ERROR:e-kolab-plugin-ui.c:260:kolab_plugin_ui_selected_folder_widget:
> > assertion failed: (is_kolab_folder_node)

I'll need to be looking into this. This should not happen. It would mean
that there is no folder tree widget in the Evolution side bar, but that widget
is always present. I'll let you know as soon as I've come up with something.
Do you get the same after Evo / E-D-S restart?

> While I'm attempting to set up a Calendar to go along with a Kolab server, I'm 
> seeing the following suspicious messages in the terminal:
> 
> > (evolution:31684): libebook-WARNING **: e_book_client_new: Cannot get book
> > from factory: Invalid source
> >
> > ** (evolution:31684): WARNING **: e_kolab_account_setup_backend_create()
> > [377] Got wrong group protocol

Okay, one more thing to look into... does it still show after you've restarted
Evo as well as E-D-S?

> > ** (evolution:31684): WARNING **: e_kolab_account_setup_backend_create:
> > FIXME add Kolab accounts to GTK box
> >
> > ** (evolution:31684): WARNING **: e_kolab_account_setup_backend_create:
> > FIXME add Kolab PIM folders to GTK box

This is from the still-missing account data re-use feature. You can safely
ignore that. This is the reason for the folders combo box being empty. :)

> I'm not sure how I can reset the entire set of data Evolution now contains, in 
> order to make sure I can start from scratch.

That's not too difficult. For now, you can use gconf-editor. Start it and
navigate to apps-->evolution. Select addressbook/calendar/... as desired. The
toplevel of these "directories" each has an entry named "sources". Double-click
that entry, and an editor dislog will open. In this dialog, you can edit the
XML strings inside the "sources" entry. Select the one named "Kolab2" and delete
it. Close gconf-editor and restart Evo and E-D-S. That should do it.
  This basically does the same as deleting a configured so-called "source" (i.e.
a PIM folder configuration) directly in Evolution.
  Please note that during the 3.5 cycle of Evolution and E-D-S development, there
will be a massive change to account (data) management. A branch for this has been
worked on for more than a year and one of the main developers threatened ;-) he will
merge during the 3.5 development. The most visible change will be that the configuration
data which is now kept in GConf as XML blobs (the stuff you see in gconf-editor) will
be moved out of GConf and be kept in plain key files. Once the merge happened,
the gconf-editor way will no longer work, but the key files will need to be edited
from then on.

The disk cache is kept under the ~/.cache/evolution directory tree. The cache directory
for a given PIM folder resides under the addressbook/ or calendar/ directory. The folder
name has the "source uid" string in it which you can see in gconf-editor for that
configured folder. You can safely delete this folder to clear the disk cache. In case you
keep the configuration for that folder (which is stored under GConf), the disk cache
and it's metadata is re-created. Locally stored offline objects, which have not yet been
pushed onto the server will be lost when deleting the disk cache.

Kind regards, and HTH,

	Christian

-- 
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