[maemo-developers] SyncEvolution in Fremantle

[From: Patrick Ohly]

Hello Maemo!

It has been a while that I posted anything here. Ironically, since I
started working on SyncEvolution full-time beginning of this year, I
seem to have *less* time left compared to the previous years when I did
it in my spare time ;-)

For those who haven't heard about it:
      * SyncEvolution is a SyncML client synchronizing PIM data with
        SyncML servers [1]. The versions <= 0.8.1 are available for
        Maemo [2] and work with the builtin address book and the Dates
        calendar.
      * This year it became the sync solution in Moblin and switched to
        the Synthesis SyncML engine [3], with the goal of using that
        also as SyncML server on a desktop [4].
      * We have direct client to server synchronization working in the
        development branch, without depending on closed third party
        software [5].

I'd love to see the latest SyncEvolution releases packaged properly for
Maemo, and so do users [6]. 0.8.1 still works fine on the older Maemo
releases it is available for, but 0.9 has several relevant improvements,
for example synchronization with Google Contacts and a GTK GUI.

I'm posting here because I hope that an interested developer or
maintainer will step up and take over packaging for Maemo. You can be
sure that this will have full support when it comes to merging patches
and including the Maemo port as first-class citizen in releases.

Another interesting area to work on would be support for other local
databases. GPE has been asked for several times. There is a plugable
backend API which would allow that, if a developer is interested [7].
That article is a bit dated, but still relevant. 0.9.1 (about to be
released) has several improvements that make writing a backend simpler,
for example it is not necessary to have your own
vCard/iCalendar/vCalendar encoder/decoder. Instead, it is possible to
exchange properties directly with the internal Synthesis format [8]. The
sqlite backend demonstrates that. For an introduction to the Synthesis
engine see [9].

I'm cross-posting to the SyncEvolution list to keep the other
SyncEvolution developers informed. If there's anything that I can help
with, please don't hesitate to reply here or contact me directly.

[1] http://syncevolution.org
[2] http://maemo.org/downloads/product/OS2008/syncevolution/
[3] http://www.estamos.de/blog/2009/05/13/syncevolution-09-beta-1-full-time-project-using-synthesis-syncml-engine/
[4] http://syncevolution.org/development/direct-synchronization-aka-syncml-server
[5] http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.mobile.syncevolution/434
[6] http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=32515
[7] http://www.estamos.de/blog/2008/08/04/syncml-client-do-it-yourself-style/
[8] http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.mobile.syncevolution/136
[9] http://syncevolution.org/development/pim-data-synchronization-why-it-so-hard

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