EvolutionCouchDBPackageForKarmic

Summary

We are writing an Evolution backend to allow access to CouchDB databases for contacts and this is for now separate from Evolution source tree, so we need to package it for CouchDB

Release Note

This new package provides access to CouchDB databases (used for UbuntuOne) from Evolution, the GNOME mail, contacts and calendar program.

Rationale

As part of the integration of UbuntuOne service into the desktop, this new package will contain backends for Evolution to access contacts in local CouchDB database, which gets replicated automatically to UbuntuOne server.

Doing a new backend is the best way to integrate it, since synchronizing the CouchDB database with local calendars might not be what people want, since you can have several local calendars, and, as with other backend types (Google, LDAP, Groupwise, Exchange), this is the way it works in Evolution, so people are already very much used to this. Also, we would be creating the CouchDB contacts addressbook automatically when people configure their Ubuntu One account, so it should all be automatic for users.

Also, providing a CouchDB backend makes it possible for people not using Ubuntu One, to setup several addressbooks in different CouchDB database servers.

User stories

  • With this, users will be able to use the same contacts in UbuntuOne's web interface, Evolution, and any other application which uses CouchDB for storing contacts

Implementation

Code is being developed in upstream GNOME git server

UI Changes

The only UI change needed is in the 'add addressbook' dialog, where we need to add a couple of options specific to CouchDB for adding the addressbook to the list of addressbooks being used in Evolution. For the local CouchDB instance, we can use automatic configuration, which is what is needed for UbuntuOne, but since we want people to be able to use the Evolution backend with other CouchDB instances, we might want to add this part of the UI, but if time does not permit, we can just drop this part of the feature for Karmic.

Code Changes

This is a new package, and applications using Evolution storage for contacts should not need any change

Test/Demo Plan

This is part of the UbuntuOne integration being done for Karmic, so it will get tested as part of the UbuntuOne testing plan

CategorySpec

DesktopTeam/Specs/Karmic/EvolutionCouchDBPackageForKarmic (last edited 2009-07-01 11:26:14 by 211)