SyncEvolution 0.9 beta 3 released: binaries available#

The end is near - SyncEvolution 0.9 is almost done. For the first time in the 0.9 series, precompiled binaries are made available again together with the new 0.9 beta 3 source snapshot. Users are encouraged to upgrade now and give feedback before the final 0.9 release.

See below for upgrade and install instructions. The initial 0.9 beta 3 packages had

two problems which were discovered while testing them. Make sure that you install the updated 0.9 beta 3 20090723 version.

Changes since 0.9 beta 2#

Enabled calendar and task synchronization for myFunambol.com. Not all iCalendar 2.0 features are supported by the server, most notably support for meetings (drops attendees), meeting invitations (drops UID), detached recurrences (drops RECURRENCE-ID). See README.funambol for details. Interoperability with the Funambol server was improved by adding support for some vCard extensions (X-MANAGER/ASSISTANT/SPOUSE/ANNIVERSARY, Bugzilla #2418). Lost ACTION property is worked around (#2422). Synchronization with Google Contacts was enabled and tested. A configuration template for that server is now provided. Google follows the vCard 2.1 specification and thus does not support some of the vCard 3.0 additions, nor some of the common extensions. As a result, several properties are not synchronized (nickname, birthday, spouse/manager, URLs, …). Only one top-level organization seems to be supported. For details, see README.google. Regarding Google’s SyncML support, refresh-from-client and one-way-from-client sync modes are not supported. Deleting contacts moves them out of the main address without deleting them permanently. When adding such a contact again, the server discards the data sent by the client and recreates the contact with the data that it remembered. SSL certificate checking with libsoup (the default transport) is now supported (#2431). However, libsoup/gnutls are very strict about SSL certificate checking and reject version 1 certificates, like the one used by Verisign for Google (#4551). At the moment the only solution is to fall back to plain http in the Google configuration template. CTRL-C no longer kills SyncEvolution right away. Instead it asks the server to suspend the session. If that takes too long, then pressing CTRL-C twice quickly will abort the sync without waiting for the server (warning, this may lead to a slow sync in the next session). WBXML is enabled by default now, except for Funambol (#2415). Using WBXML reduces message sizes and increases parsing performance. It was not enabled initially in the 0.9 releases in order to test this new feature more thoroughly. Old configs don’t have an explicit enableWBXML setting and therefore will automatically use the new default. Various bug fixes and improvements:

  • only show servers in GUI which are tested and supported (Bugzilla #3336)
  • a single log file is written in .html format (#3474)
  • added several translations of the GUI
  • lots of testing improvements, build binary packages again

Upgrading

When enabling calendar and todo synchronization with Funambol in an existing configuration, set the type so that iCalendar 2.0 is used: syncevolution --configure --source-type sync=two-way \ funambol calendar todo syncevolution --configure \ --source-type type='calendar:text/calendar!' \ funambol calendar syncevolution --configure \ --source-type type='todo:text/calendar!' \ funambol todo When creating a configuration anew, this is not necessary because the configuration template contains those types. When upgrading from 0.8 or downgrading again, do a "refresh-from-server" or "refresh-from-client" sync (depending on which side has the authoritative copy of the data) once to get client and server into a consistent state. Not doing so can result in applying the same changes to the server multiple times and thus duplicates. If unsure, run a normal sync with the command line tool and check for unwanted data modifications in its output. With the "--list-sessions" and "--restore --before" options it is possible to revert to the local state before that last sync and then update the server accordingly in a normal, incremental sync.

Source, Installation, Further information

Main project page: http://syncevolution.org/ Technical information: http://moblin.org/projects/syncevolution/ Source snapshots are in http://downloads.syncevolution.org/syncevolution/sources 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 These binaries include the new “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). .tar.gz archives are also available in http://downloads.syncevolution.org/syncevolution/evolution. In contrast to 0.8.x archives, the 0.9 files have to be unpacked and then moved to /usr, because several files would not be found otherwise. After installation, follow the http://syncevolution.org/documentation/getting-started steps.