It’s very exciting when you’re among the first going on something new which looks terribly promising, and I’m very happy to be in this situation right now. =)

Namely, Akunambol is now hosted onto git.kde.org! Cookies to the sysadmins!

If you are following Akunambol’s development you should now clone git.kde.org:playground/akunambol.git, or check out http://projects.kde.org/projects/akunambol, which includes a very nice code browser too.

What else? Ah, yes, we get a commit filter, under the virtual svn path of “trunk/playground/pim/akunambol”.

This is all very cool, right? But since we are among the first migrating, we are experiencing some rough edges too. These are promptly being fixed by the sysadmins (you guys rock!) on IRC, and I’m trying to get some of the most important details we figure out written down for future reference.

One of the main things which created “problems” (more than problems, things-to-be-written-down) was the customization of gitolite made to suit KDE needs. Not all commands are the same that you could find on the official documentation, and most of them are undocumented (besides the usual little bugs).

So, when you move your pet projects to git, make sure to read and update this page: http://techbase.kde.org/User:Ruphy/KDEGitolite. I created it in my user’s namespace because it was meant as a wip-thing, but it can be moved as soon as we find a convenient place for it to stay.

So everybody, have a great migration! :)

Just in case you happen to open KAddressBook, and see that the new entries display the vcard name where the name should appear, like it has happened here:

then relax. If I had a large and friendly font, I’d probably also write “Don’t panic”, on the back side of this post.

Your data is safe.

The filter works, too, and the bug is in Akonadi, but just in the tree item view, to be precise. This means that you can expect to see it again as soon as akonadi is fixed, and none of your contacts data is harmed.

To be even more specific, the bug where this is tracked is this one: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=252145

Please note that this only affects KAddressBook tree visualization, and in no way it compromises how the other application work (or visualize your contact data).

So, now that you’re more relaxed about this issue, here comes the howto part of the post:

Infact, in case you still badly need your contacts back, today I pushed a commit which (cleanly) workarounds this problem. To get it, you should do a number of things. Please note that while this procedure has worked for me like a charm, it could not work for you for many unknown reasons. Therefore, please proceed with extreme care!

1. Perform a full sync, so that all of your contacts data is backed up on the server.
2. Checkout the 0.2.x branch from git.

   git clone git://gitorious.org/akunambol/akunambol.git

3. Compile the branch as explained here (look at the section “Building Akunambol”)
4. Stop Akonadi, remove (or just backup) the local contacts, and start Akonadi again. (warning: ./local/share/contacts is where all of your contacts are stored! you might want to mv it instead)

   akonadictl stop
   rm -r .local/share/contacts/
   akonadictl start

5. Now, remove all the cache created by Akunambol. This will ensure that Akunambol won’t think that you just deleted all of your contacts (thus deleting them from the server too) but instead will think that it has just started on an empty addressbook (thus filling it with the data you saved during Step 1).

   rm -rf .kde4/share/apps/akunambol

6. Start Akunambol, and start a sync. Once it finishes you should see all of your contacts in KAddressBook again.

To close this post, yes, I know that all this procedure is a bit cumbersome, but again, if you have had this problem, don’t panic: your data is safe. You don’t need to follow these steps. You will not be able to display it correctly for the moment, but it’s only in THAT particular visualization, and all the functionality works nonetheless, including contacts searching, and other views of your contact list. Then, in case KAddressBook is really crucial to you, and you can’t afford to wait for the bugfix, you can simply use the procedure I illustrated above and everything should be fine. But actually, most of the users (me included) won’t even notice the problem…

Anyways… That’s all for now! Happy syncing! :)

Hi,

Akunambol 0.2.1 is out! This is a minor release, but one that adds nonetheless a lot of polishing over what was version 0.2. Here’s a very quick list of changes:

• Fixed 5 out of 6 reported bugs, including all the crashers, and one wish. There is only one minor thing remaining which will be addressed by the plugin infrastructure.
• Implemented a likeback system to gather feedback (the one you see on KMess or Amarok). I hope that it will be useful. :)
• We now have a shiny (well, not too shiny, but…) icon used everywhere, and there’s more integration with the KDE workspace in general.
• Fixed all the licensing issues; there is already an AUR package (even if it’s still 0.2 for now) for Arch Linux users, and a PPA for *ubuntu users is also arriving. If you can make packages for your distro, don’t hesitate to contact me!

Get it while it’s hot, compile it, and try it out: it should be a big improvement over version 0.2.

By the way, since I’ve been asked a couple of times, I’d like to point out that the published funambol snapshot (on the akunambol website) is a prerelease of version 9. In spite of the fact that it’s a prerelease, it’s infact very stable – just – keep that in mind when doing packages, if you want to handle upgrades gracefully. =)

Quick Update #2 [03/09]: The new tarball is up! md5sum 54475b80271a137fb56c1e39c2e470ad, or use this direct link.

Quick update [03/09]: it seems like the released libfunambol snapshot has some problems building on some platforms (with an error like this: http://pastebin.com/Rd0jpQEW). If you’re hit by this bug, stay tuned – I’m investigating and I will release a new source tarball as soon as possible. Also check http://blog.ruphy.org/posts/115.

I’m extremely happy to announce the release of Akunambol 0.2! =)

Here is an extract from the announcement on the main site:

This is the first release of the 0.2 series, which will be the last one of the 0.x series. We’re in fact planning exciting new things for the 1.0, but we first wanted to release a version for everyone to use, so that it’s possible to sync all the most used PIM data (contacts, events, tasks).

This release should be quite stable, since all reported bugs have already been fixed, and it also introduces the much awaited support for multiple calendars or address books, so you get to choose what you want to sync. Investigations on how to support syncing multiple calendars together are also being done.

From this moment onwards Akunambol will also have a new home, reachable at the address http://akunambol.ruphy.org. The repository still lives on gitorious for now, but will migrate to KDE’s git as soon as it is ready.

In addition to this, akunambol has also gained a new bug tracker. To report a bug or a wish you can now use KDE’s bug tracker (bugs.kde.org) and file a bug against akunambol.

Since this is also a blog post, I could say some more words about the “exciting new things” that we’re planning. In few words, we would like to extend Akunambol’s possibilities beyond PIM, by putting all the syncing logic into plugins. These will be dynamically loaded, like plasmoids, and could sync anything, from contacts to pictures to random files.

This way, it will be possible to provide a complete syncing framework for KDE (ala Android), in which it will be possible to build services based on the web (like RSS fetching) to backups, or even Dropbox-like clones, together with things like ownCloud.

By putting all the logic into plugins, we also loose any kind strong dependency from any library. At the same time there will be both some classes that (for example) will help you if you choose to use a standard protocol (like SyncML), and a generic interface which will allow you to do all the things you’d might like to do.

This will be either controlled by a kded daemon and a notification icon, silently living in the background, or by a GUI application.

The possibilities are indefinite, but we have just started to work on the plugin infrastructure. Let me know if you want to help, or have any idea about a nice syncing plugin. You can do so by either leaving a comment or opening a wishlist bug.

Anyways, we’ve spent way too much words on the future of Akunambol. I mean, you still haven’t tried out Akunambol 0.2!

So, what are you waiting for? Get it while it’s hot, and have fun! =)

Hi!
I just released Akunambol 0.1, a KDE application to sync your Akonadi data with a SyncML server. You want to use Akunambol to have a full backup of your contacts and calendar, and why not, synchronize and share your address book (and calendar) between your mobile, your iPod touch, your Google account and your KDE desktop. Read more to know how to do that.

Akunambol has been built using the Funambol C++ SDK, as part of their code sniper program. I announced it yesterday on their mailing list, but I think that it deserves also a blog post, since it may be of interest for the KDE community. This is the first release aimed at first adapters; however in my testing it resulted to be very stable for the few things it does. There shouldn’t be any data losses, but a backup is as always advised.

If you want to check out the code, please beware that it still kills kittens here and there. For now this is a release that works, and I will  fix most code issues for 0.3 when I’ll be implementing calendar support, thus abstracting much of the code.

Check it out, follow the development, fork, clone and hack on it at: http://gitorious.org/akunambol
Or, just download a tarball from http://github.com/ruphy/akunambol/tarball/v0.1
(yes, it’s github, unfortunately gitorious is still implementing on-the-fly tarball generation for a tag ;-) )

Here’s an extract from the mail sent to the funambol mailing list:

This is a stable release, but of a very immature software – please
treat it as such. Make sure you have a backup of your data before
attempting to synchronize. Fortunately Akonadi allows that with a
single click (check out the akonaditray utlity).

For now Akunambol only synchronizes contacts, the code still kills some
kittens in certain places, but I already successfully synced several
contact datasets flawlessly. :-)
In other words, the few things that Akunambol does for now should work
perfectly. If they don’t it’s a bug.

Please test it and report any problems, suggestions or patches you
might have.

Ok, now that you know something about akunambol, how to get started actually using it?

First, you need to compile and install the funambol SDK. Download it at http://download.forge.objectweb.org/sync4j/funambol-client-sdk-8.0.1.zip, to compile it it’s the typical autotools build system. There may also be a Debian package available created by a funambol developer, I will edit this article with the link once he sends it to me.

Once Funambol is installed, you can compile and install Akunambol like a normal KDE application, using cmake.

The next thing you need is a SyncML server on which you can push and retrieve your contacts. A “remote storage”. You can either install your own or get a free account at my.funambol.com.

Now you’re set. Start Akunambol, insert your username and password, eventually change the sync URL, and press “Sync contacts” to let the magic begin.

That’s all for now! Next releases will include a much more sexy UI, calendar and tasks syncronization too. Stay tuned!