[SyncEvolution] Syncing two servers

[Patrick Ohly]

On Wed, 2013-12-18 at 01:16 -0800, Todd Wilson wrote:
> Thanks, Patrick, this looks very promising!  A couple of questions
> below:
> 
> 
> On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 11:41 PM, Patrick
> Ohly <patrick.ohly at intel.com> wrote:
> 
>         You can set it up in two ways:
>              1. Sync between the two servers directly. A single sync
>         run will
>                 get them in sync.
>              2. Sync both servers against the same local database. You
>         need to
>                 run syncs multiple times, alternating between the two
>         servers,
>                 until no changes are transferred any more.
>         I suggest you follow the second approach.
> 
> 
> I wonder, would your recommendation change if the syncing between my
> two servers were only one-way -- that is to say, if I only make
> changes in one calendar but want them to be reflected in both?

In that case the situation is indeed a bit more favorable for directly
syncing between the servers, albeit there's still one caveat specific to
calendars: internally, individual VEVENTs get synced. In ActiveSync and
CalDAV, an item can consist of multiple VEVENTs, so both backends go
through considerable effort to split and merge into/from individual
VEVENTs. This will cause additional network traffic.

I've toyed with the idea of changing the syncing such that it works with
a set of related VEVENTs as a single item, but then we end up with the
problem of translating between one side which uses individual VEVENTs
(SyncML) and another side with uses a set (CalDAV, ActiveSync). It's
complicated :-/

>         For oAuth2 you will need SyncEvolution 1.3.99.6 and either
>         GNOME Online
>         Accounts >= 3.8 or Ubuntu Online Accounts with the Ubuntu
>         patches (not
>         in 1.3.99.6 yet) - see the 1.3.99.6 and 1.3.99.5 release
>         announcement.
> 
> 
> How would you suggest installing 1.3.99.6 on my Ubuntu 13.10 system?
>
>   The Ubuntu packages are old (1.2.99.4), Evolution is behind (3.8.4),
> the installation documentation only refers to much earlier
> distributions, and when I try installing from the unstable repository
> as suggested in the release notes for 1.3.99.6, I get missing
> dependencies (activesyncd, libebook, libecal) and am not able to find
> any hints about the proper way to resolve these.

The SyncEvolution 1.3.99.6 binaries should work. Can you install
"syncevolution-evolution"?

activesyncd won't work. It was compiled for a specific version of EDS,
3.4, and is only compatible with that. 3.6 and 3.8 changed the API too
much.

It might not even compile when using EDS > 3.4. I haven't checked that,
though. As always, patches welcome.


-- 
Best Regards, Patrick Ohly

The content of this message is my personal opinion only and although
I am an employee of Intel, the statements I make here in no way
represent Intel's position on the issue, nor am I authorized to speak
on behalf of Intel on this matter.