SyncEvolution 1.5.3#

Maintenance release. syncevolution.org binaries are now getting compiled for distros >= Ubuntu Xenial 16.04 LTS. Usage of deprecated libraries (GNOME keyring) and APIs (SoupAsyncSession) was replaced. libical v3 is supported.

The code now compiles more cleanly with recent compilers and depends on C++11 support.

Details:#

  • EDS: more generic open retry handling

    Recent EDS started to exhibit race conditions when opening a database (for example, https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=791306). Opening was already tried again for a certain known error in some old EDS version. Now it is tried five times with a delay of one second for all errors.

  • SoupTransportAgent: require libsoup 2.42, no deprecated methods

    This allows us to get rid of deprecated function calls. We no longer need to set a default proxy either, the newer libsoup does that itself by default.

  • C++: replace auto_ptr with unique_ptr, require C++11

    auto_ptr has been deprecated for a while now. unique_ptr can be taken for granted now, so use that instead.

  • testing: work around Google CalDAV RECURRENCE-ID

    Stand-alone events with RECURRENCE-ID get mangled by the server: it converts the RECURRENCE-ID time to UTC. Reported in: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/47811670/detached-recurrence-without-parent-event

  • GNOME: replace gnome-keyring with libsecret (FDO #104219)

    The GNOME keyring library has been obsoleted for a long time now, long enough that the replacement libsecret is available on all supported distros. Therefore we can switch unconditionally.

  • libical: support libical v3 (FDO #104220)

    libical v3 removes some deprecated functions (like icaltime_from_timet) and removes the “is_utc” member from icaltimetype. The replacement code works with old and new libical and thus needs no ifdefs.

    Original author: Milan Crha

  • syncevolution.org: fixed packaging (FDO #98014, FDO #100549)

    The activesyncd package missing dependencies on libgnome-keyring0 and libglib2.0-bin and therefore failed to work when installed on a minimal system without those.

  • various build and test fixes/workarounds

Upgrading from releases <= 1.3.99.4:#

If the value of “username/databaseUser/proxyUser” contains a colon, the “user:” prefix must be added to the value, to continue treating it like a plain user name and not some reference to an unknown identity provider (like “id:”, “goa:”, “signon:”, etc.).

The lookup of passwords in GNOME Keyring was updated slightly in 1.3.99.5. It may be necessary to set passwords anew if the old one is no longer found.

Upgrading from release 1.2.x:#

The sync format of existing configurations for Mobical (aka Everdroid) must be updated manually, because the server has encoding problems when using vCard 3.0 (now the default for Evolution contacts): syncevolution –configure
syncFormat=text/x-vcard
mobical addressbook

The Funambol template explicitly enables usage of the “refresh-from-server” sync mode to avoid getting throttled with 417 ‘retry later’ errors. The same must be added to existing configs manually: syncevolution –configure
enableRefreshSync=TRUE
funambol

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. Releases >= 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 code bundles for users are available in https://download.01.org/syncevolution/syncevolution/sources and the original source is in the git repositories http://cgit.freedesktop.org/SyncEvolution/

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

deb https://download.01.org/syncevolution/apt stable main

The GPG key for the repository needs to be imported as root with:

apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 43D03AD9

The signing key was renewed for this release. If the key was already added earlier, refresh it with:

apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --refresh-keys 43D03AD9

Then install “syncevolution-evolution”, “syncevolution-kde” and/or “syncevolution-activesync”.

These binaries include the “sync-ui” GTK GUI and were compiled for Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial) and should be compatible also with more recent distros. ActiveSync binaries were compiled for Debian Stretch, the upcoming Debian Buster (based on current Testing), and Ubuntu Xenial. The packages mentioned above are meta-packages which pull in suitable packages matching the distro during installation.

Older distributions can no longer be supported with precompiled binaries because of missing or incompatible libraries, but the source should still compile on older distros.

The same binaries are also available as .tar.gz archives in https://download.01.org/syncevolution/syncevolution/. In contrast to 0.8.x archives, the 1.x .tar.gz archives have to be unpacked and the content must be moved to /usr, because several files would not be found otherwise. When using activesyncd, run “glib-compile-schemas /usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas” as root after unpacking the archive.

rpm packages are no longer provided due to lack of demand; SyncEvolution is provided by Fedora as a distro package.

After installation, follow the getting started steps. More specific HOWTOs can be found in the Wiki.