Winter updates

Phew. long time no news! It's been a busy start of winter ... on that topic a happy new year to everyone! Welcome if you're reading this for the first time on PlanetSUSE, have a look at my intro if you're curious who I am.

A few updates on what I've been working on this month at least.

libopensync-plugin-akonadi 0.22.1 released
Released an update to try and make it work better with the Google Akonadi resource (thanks ares)

Package updates on the OBS

• Packaged krazy2, the KDE code quality checker, straight from git in KDE:Unstable:Playground
• Updated get_iplayer, the BBC iPlayer download tool, in home:MasterPatricko. It now works!
• Packaged powertop2 beta, the power consumption monitor, in home:MasterPatricko; interesting improvements compared to powertop. Needs kernel 2.6.37 (i.e. Factory or Kernel:HEAD) to show off its full power, but still works in 11.3.
• Update liquidwar6, the particle simulation game, to 0.0.9beta in games
• Update maxima, the Computer Algebra system, in science to 5.23.0
  
• Update unshield, the .CAB file extractor from the SynCE project, in Archiving (and eventually Factory) to 0.6




• Fix build of denyhosts, the SSH brute-force protection tool, on x86_64




• Update redshift, the auto screen-brightness adjuster in Factory:Contrib to 0.6




• Created a package vncserver-autostart in home:MasterPatricko which adds an init script to start a tightvnc vncserver on bootup. Complete with sysconfig-style configuration. Completely insecure of course but perfect for a local network.

Started using my hard-earned openSUSE member benefits; tejas.guruswamy AT and masterpatricko AT opensuse.org are operational; got the blog syndicated on planet.opensuse.org

Plus, as always, I have a couple of new project ideas I'd like to get started on ... more on that soon. Comments welcome as always

opensync-plugin-kdepim and opensync-plugin-akonadi

Following on from my previous posts [1], [2], here is are the release announcements for the OpenSync plugins I've been working on.

opensync-plugin-kdepim
This is an OpenSync 0.22 plugin to sync with KDEPIM (pre-akonadi, so < 4.5). Using this and the OpenSync framework you can sync your KDE PIM data with mobile devices and other applications. This is ONLY compatible with OpenSync 0.22; not OpenSync 0.3x or above. This code is not guaranteed bug-free; always have a backup of your data. This plugin can sync contacts with KAddressBook, events and todos with KOrganizer, and notes with KNotes (over DBus). If you have akonadi configured this plugin will refuse to sync (you can override this in the config, see the README). IMPORTANT: Note syncing depends on you having a KDE installation where bko#251914 is fixed. This means knotes >= 4.4.7, or use the patch there to recompile.
If you can't get that to work, or if you don't need note syncing, in the patches directory of the source there is a patch that can turn off note syncing and allow it to compile.

opensync-plugin-kdepim on kde-apps.org
libopensync-plugin-kdepim-0.22.tar.bz2 source tarball on the OBS

opensync-plugin-akonadi
This is an OpenSync 0.22 plugin to sync with KDEPIM with akonadi, so > 4.4).
Using this and the OpenSync framework you can sync your KDE PIM data with mobile devices and other applications.
This is ONLY compatible with OpenSync 0.22; not OpenSync 0.3x or above.
This code is not guaranteed bug-free; always have a backup of your data.

This plugin can sync contacts, events, todos, and notes with Akonadi. (There is currently no easy way to view Akonadi notes). Make sure you have at least one akonadi collection of each type before syncing.

opensync-plugin-akonadi on kde-apps.org
libopensync-plugin-akonadi-0.22.tar.bz2 source tarball on the OBS

For both, prerequisites are libopensync-devel and libkdepimlibs4-devel. Compilation is standard

mkdir build; cd build
cmake ..
make
make install

Usage is add plugin to an OpenSync sync group; sync.

Both are available on the OBS in KDE:Unstable:Playground

KitchenSync 0.22

As explained in my previous post, something is finally happening with regards to KDEPIM and syncing with mobile devices.

As step 1, I have resurrected KitchenSync - the KDE OpenSync frontend. This application allows for creating, configuring, and syncing OpenSync sync groups among any of the OpenSync plugins (check your distro for opensync-plugin-* or similar).

Basic use should be straightforward - add a sync group, add the members you want to sync between, configure if necessary, sync.

The underlying OpenSync 0.22 framework is showings its age a bit though, and does have some bugs, so if you see a problem in KitchenSync, first make sure that the syncing works with the command-line tool msynctool before reporting a bug in KitchenSync (which, for this version, you can do by directly contacting me here on this blog or via email). Msynctool will also show a bit more debugging output so if something is going wrong, definitely check there first.

I've made binary and source RPMs available for openSUSE 11.1 and newer on the OBS in KDE:Unstable:Playground, which I'll try and keep updated whenever I can.
The source tarball is also available thanks to the OBS. I'll see about getting some publicly accessible source repository soon.

Prerequisites are libopensync-devel, libkde4-devel, and kdepimlibs4-devel or whatever similar name your distro calls them. Compilation instructions are standard KDE SC 4 / cmake stuff.

mkdir build; cd build
cmake ..
make
make install

The release is available on KDE-Apps.org.

In an entirely coincidental event, Quentin Denis has revived the KDE4 + OpenSync 0.40 version of KitchenSync on KDE SVN too. This does not overlap with his work; OpenSync 0.40 is not compatible with OpenSync 0.22. However, I'll be keeping track of his development and backporting any useful fixes (and lending any help I can).

OpenSync and KDE

Those of you who have used KDE software for a while may remember way, way back when it was announced that KDE would be cooperating with a project called OpenSync to provide PIM data synchronisation to a wide range of devices. The program KitchenSync was brought in as an OpenSync frontend and for a while everything was good - you could sync contacts, events, todos, and notes from KDE 3.5 with your mobile phones and PDAs.

Then the OpenSync project moved away from the stable version 0.22 and started work on a grand new 0.3x branch. They said when they reached 0.40, the project would be stable for end users again. Three years later they are still not ready, with the last release, 0.39, one year ago now. The project still has not been abandoned but things are moving extremely slowly.

Meanwhile KDE moved on as well, to our beloved 4.x series. It was decided to wait for OpenSync 0.40, and then put some effort into porting over the KDE-OpenSync integration - but as KDE release after release went by without OpenSync 0.40 being ready, people got bored of waiting for OpenSync and so KitchenSync was dropped, leaving KDE 4.x users no way of syncing PIM data with mobile devices. Further complicating this is the recent move to akonadi, which adds another layer between your PIM data and where you want it to be - on your mobile device. Compounding this is that all distributions, on the instructions of the OpenSync project, still ship the now-unmaintained and uncared-for OpenSync 0.22 version.

A few technically successful KDE Google SoC projects were undertaken to provide an alternative syncing framework (for example based on SyncML) but they never gained enough polish, or enough device support, to catch anyone's attention.

Now one of my introductions to the F/OSS world was helping a project called SynCE, a framework to talk to Windows Mobile devices from Linux. SynCE had always used OpenSync as the syncing framework and a common question on the SynCE mailing lists was "How can I get my data into KDE?" - and there was no answer. So finally given some free time this summer I decided to do something about it.

In total, I backported the half-finished KitchenSync KDE4 + OpenSync 0.40 port back to OpenSync 0.22 so that it is usable right now. Then I did the same for the KDEPIM plugin - but this only works with KDE SC releases before akonadi was introduced (i.e. < 4.4). Then I wrote a brand-new Akonadi Sync plugin for OpenSync 0.22 - not to be confused with the still-in-development Akonadi / OpenSync 0.40 plugin still available in KDE trunk. I'll do separate release announcements for them all.