Hello!
I am just about to release the first version of Genesis after the
rewrite. There were some points I noticed where there is room for
improvement regarding the interplay between SyncEvolution, sync-ui and
Genesis. Some points have been mentioned before, so please excuse some
duplications, but I thought it would make sense to list all these issues
here.
API issues
Problem:
Watching for configuration changes (e.g., for refreshing the
list of servers in the GUI) currently is a bit cumbersome. It
requires watching for SessionChanged, request GetConfigs, and
look if the configs have changed. This is not really a problem,
but it might be more convenient to get notifications about
config changes directly.
Proposed solution:
Introduce a Server.ConfigChanged signal.
Problem:
GUIs cannot tell for which server a session was started if the
GUI didn’t start the session itself. So for example when Genesis
sees that a sync session ended and displays the results, it
cannot tell (and therefore cannot show to the user) which server
was actually affected. So e.g. notifying about the results of
automated syncs lacks some rather important information.
Proposed Solution:
Introduce a Session.GetServerName() method.
Problem:
The syncevo-dbus-server handles user notifications itself (e.g.
for automated syncs.) A GUI might want to notify users about
syncs itself. E.g. Genesis shows a spinning status icon, which
makes the sync started/sync ended notifications of
syncevo-dbus-server redundant.
Proposed Solution:
Clients should be able to tell syncevo-dbus-server not to
display sync notifications. I propose a method
Server.InhibitNotification(bool) which could be used to inhibit
notifications when Genesis is started and allow notifications
before it terminates.
Sync-UI
Genesis no longer ships its own configuration facilities, but instead
uses sync-ui for this. In general, sync-ui is more powerful than
Genesis’ old setup assistant. But if I didn’t oversee something, it is
currently not possible to set evolutionsource. There might be situations
where one wants to sync other sources than the default ones, e.g. when
syncing the private calendar with one service, and the work calendar
with another one.
It would be nice if one could choose the sources in sync-uis settings
dialog. Maybe it would make sense to rename the “show server settings”
expander to something like “show extended settings” and allow to select
the data sources there.
syncevolution commandline
I just noticed that syncevolution commandline commands (like
--print-config or --print-sessions) are treated as syncs in the GUIs
(sync-ui, Genesis). This is because the GUIs watch for
Session.StatusChanged and expect that a sync was performed with
status==done. Even commandline errors (like not giving a server name
where required) is treated like a sync error in the GUIs.
I don’t know at which point this could be solved. Are there means for
the GUIs to tell if a session was a sync session or something else? If
not, should the API be extended to cover this? Or could simple the
commandline client be changed not to trigger SessionChanged signals?
I don’t know if these changes are possible, but I’d be happy to hear
your feedback to these issues.
Regards,
Frederik
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