SyncEvolution 0.9.1 released

SyncEvolution 0.9.1 is available. It replaces 0.9 as the official stable
release. Changes since that version are listed below. Changes made between
beta releases (for those who helped testing them) are documented here:
http://syncevolution.org/blogs/pohly/2009/syncevolution-0...

There are some known issues, see below. The more issues get reported
and fixed, the sooner there will be a 0.9.2 maintenance update, so keep
the reports coming. If you want to report something or get involved, then
contact the team:
http://syncevolution.org/support

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.x, a third-party
SyncML server is required.

In the current "master" branch, SyncEvolution itself is already able
to act as a SyncML server. Support for direct synchronization via
Bluetooth is planned for 1.0. A snapshot release will be made available
as soon as possible - end of October obviously did not work out...


SyncEvolution 0.9 -> 0.9.1, 26.10.2009
======================================

Mobical and Memotoo are now officially supported.

Memotoo uses vCard 2.1 with several Evolution specific extensions. It
uses iCalendar 2.0, however, without actually supporting the advanced
features of it. Times are converted to UTC and meeting information are
lost.

Mobical uses vCard 2.1 and vCalendar 1.0 as data formats, with the
result that many properties used in Evolution are not supported by the
server.  In particular calendar support is very limited (known issues
when events are in time zones different from the one selected locally
and on the server, no support for meetings). For details see
README.mobical.

*** Beware *** that the Mobical SyncML password is *not* the same as
the one for their web site. Log into mobical.net, then go to "my accounts
>> configure new device >> manual settings" to find the SyncML
credentials.

It is now possible to compile database backends outside of
SyncEvolution, install them and have SyncEvolution use them
automatically like any other backend. The backend API has been
enhanced considerably. For example, backend developers have
access to a modular set of utility classes that can be mixed
into a specific implementation. Backends can access the internal
Synthesis representation directly and therefore no longer need
their own vCard/vCalendar/iCalendar parser.

The sqlite demo backend can be enabled and compiled again with
--enable-sqlite. It demonstrates how to map directly from the
Synthesis field list to some internal format (an SQLite database
schema in this case).

Other changes:

* Resend messages to cope with intermittent loss of network
  connectivity (Moblin Bugzilla #3427). See the new "ResendDuration"
  and "ResendDelay" configuration properties for details.

* SyncEvolution command line uses the GNOME keyring when
  the new --keyring option is given.

* The logging of added and updated items was enhanced. Events,
  tasks and memos are logged with a short description instead of
  just the local ID. The description for contacts was improved.

* Receiving photos from Mobical failed because Mobical
  does not quite follow the vCard 2.1 (Moblin Bugzilla #6668).
  Sending photos worked, but added a few bytes of garbage
  at the end of each photo (typically ignored when showing).
  Parser was made more tolerant by Synthesis and encoder bug
  was fixed.

* Task priorities used by Mobical and Evolution did not match:
  vCalendar 1.0 uses 1-3, iCalendar 2.0 uses 1-9 (MB #6664).
  SyncEvolution now translates between the two ranges, with
  some information getting lost when talking to a peer which
  only supports the smaller range.

* Importing work and home phone numbers from Google into desktop
  Evolution works better, because SyncEvolution now adds the "VOICE"
  flag expected by Evolution (MB#6501).

* SSL certificate checking with Google is enabled by default
  and enabled in Moblin, because libsoup in that distro has
  the necessary fix. Without that fix, all connection attempts
  fail. The binaries on syncevolution.org are compiled with
  --disable-ssl-certificate-check, so users who want the
  additional security must enable it.

* .rpms on syncevolution.org no longer specify a dependency
  on certain Perl features. This depencency was a problem on
  Mandriva. Unwanted hard dependencies on libecal in syncevolution.org
  binaries are avoided for real this time (MB#6552).

* Some sync-UI enhancements (describe sync services, avoid crash
  with very long input in some of the text boxes (MB#5219), set
  application icon, improved some strings).

* sync-UI: now disables sources which are not supported when
  setting up a configuration, like memos on Moblin (MB #6672).
  Previously the source was enabled, which prevented using
  using the configuration as-is on the command line.

* The sync UI allowed to enable calendar and task synchronization
  with Google although Google does not support that (MB#5871).
  In new installations this is prevented by clearing the URI
  for those data categories.

* Trying to remove a non-existent configuration via the command
  line now raises an error, to catch typos (MB #6673).

* Improved checks which logs in the logdir belong to the current
  server (MB#5215).

* Improved sanity checking of integer configuration parameters
  (MB#6500).

* Spelling fix: "aboring" => "aborting"


Known issue:

* Mobical and Memotoo do not have a description in the GUI yet.

* ZYB.com is not supported because of a known anchor handling
  problem in the server (MB#2424).

* When running as a cron job with GNOME >= 2.24, a D-Bus session
  must be created manually as described here:
  http://www.estamos.de/blog/2009/05/08/running-syncevoluti...
  In 0.9.1, the "GConf Error: Failed to contact configuration server"
  message is hidden from the user, leading to a failed syncs with
  error code 500 and no further explanation (MB #7655).

* There is an unreproducible report that a refresh-from-client sync
  of the Evolution "Birthday & Anniversaries" calendar no longer
  works with 0.9.x, comment here if you run into this:
  http://bugzilla.moblin.org/show_bug.cgi?id=7759

* The IPv6 configuration in Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala" in combination
  with libsoup and myFUNAMBOL causes network connectivity problems:
  https://bugs.launchpad.net/libsoup/+bug/473042

* Local problems during a sync are recorded with ERROR messages, but
  do not affect the overall sync result and thus might go unnoticed:
  http://bugzilla.moblin.org/show_bug.cgi?id=7755
  The local problem in that report is "calendar: extracting event",
  with no explanation at this point.


Upgrading from 0.9:

* nothing to do, upgrading and downgrading should work seamlessly

Upgrading from 0.8.1:

* After switching from a 0.8.x release to a 0.9.x one, or vice versa,
  do a "syncevolution --sync refresh-from-server" or
  "--sync refresh-from-client" (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.


Source, Installation, Further information
=========================================

http://syncevolution.org/blogs/pohly/2009/syncevolution-0...

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 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).

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 0.9 .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:
http://syncevolution.org/documentation/getting-started

-- 
Patrick Ohly, on behalf of everyone who has helped
to make SyncEvolution 0.9.x possible:
http://syncevolution.org/about/contributors