Reposting a blog entry to the mailing list for those interested.
Pardon the HTML, I didn't feel like fixing up all the links and
formatting.
Hopefully most of the backup/restore issues that come up so frequently
here will soon be a thing of the past.
Matthew Barnes
________________________________________________________________________
Major Evolution-Data-Server API breaks about to land
I mentioned in my previous blog post a few months ago that I've been
overhauling Evolution-Data-Server's account format and APIs. I've been
doing all this work on a very long-running branch (18 months old now!)
which was not ready in time for GNOME 3.4. But it's ready now, and I'll
be merging it this weekend just after the Evolution 3.5.2 tarballs are
released.
I'm announcing this to a wide audience because the API breaks are going
to affect a number of other projects in the GNOME community and perhaps
beyond. I already have patches prepared for several key GNOME
components, and I stand ready to assist any other projects which will
need to port their code to the new Evolution-Data-Server APIs. Please
contact me if you maintain one of these projects so I can help make the
transition as smooth as possible. (mbar...@redhat.com or #evolution on
IRC).
In short, Evolution-Data-Server will migrate account data from the XML
blobs we've historically stuffed into GConf to plain text files which
live under the XDG-compliant $XDG_CONFIG_HOME directory.
Evolution-Data-Server will also introduce a new D-Bus service to serve
these account files to client programs and to take over certain account
management responsibilities so that Evolution-Data-Server becomes more
of an autonomous desktop service that does not rely so heavily on
Evolution.
I've written a fair amount of documentation, so just to get the links
out of the way...
* Details about the new file format and an overview of the
client-side APIs
* A preview of the new libedataserver API Reference Manual
* A work-in-progress migration guide, FAQ-style
Immediate benefits to users and to GNOME are:
* Much easier to backup account data or copy it to other machines.
Having account data locked in a configuration database makes
this pretty painful at present. This has been an ongoing
problem for at least as long as I've been involved with
Evolution (circa 2006). Evolution-Data-Server will monitor the
user directory containing the account files, which means
restoring an account is simply a matter of dropping files into
that folder. Evolution-Data-Server will notice the new files
and (assuming they're valid) activate them immediately without
having to restart any programs.
* The new D-Bus service will centralize interactive authentication
prompts. This means client programs will no longer have to deal
with authentication at all. Internally, the new D-Bus service
will use GcrSystemPrompt to show a system-modal password prompt
whenever a mail, calendar or address book backend needs to
authenticate and a password is not readily available. In a
GNOME Shell session, GNOME Shell will take over and display a
dialog window consistent with the shell's overall look and feel.
* The new D-Bus service will monitor GNOME Online Accounts and
automatically add or delete equivalent Evolution-Data-Server
accounts. Previously Evolution handled this, which
unfortunately meant Evolution had to be already running or at
least started for new Google accounts to be noticed and
propagated to services like the GNOME Shell calendar. That
issue is now solved.
* As part of this effort I've also converted Evolution-EWS to the
new Evolution-Data-Server APIs and have added support for GNOME
Online Accounts' new Exchange option. This is a major GNOME
feature for 3.6.
The new account management system also opens the door to all kinds of
cool new enhancements to Evolution and Evolution-Data-Server. I have
lots of ideas and could easily spend another year chasing them all, but
the order of the day is to get this branch finally merged so we can
shake out the bugs and help other projects adapt in time for GNOME 3.6.
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