SyncEvolution 0.9 beta 3 released: binaries available on http://syncevolution.org

[Patrick Ohly]

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 project itself keeps growing. Therefore the main web presence has
been moved to its own independent home:
  http://syncevolution.org


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.

-- 
Bye, Patrick Ohly
--  
Patrick.Ohly at gmx.de
http://www.estamos.de/