Re: [Evolution-hackers] OWA with "SessionGuard" [OT]

[Jules Colding <colding omesc com>]

On Tue, 2006-10-17 at 12:12 +0200, Philip Van Hoof wrote:
> On Mon, 2006-10-16 at 18:25 +0530, Ritesh Khadgaray wrote:
> > Off track, check out http://www.omesc.com/ for evolution-brutus .
> 
> Could Brutus be used for accessing Exchange services using just Camel?

Yes, I would think so. Something like this has been done before using
the calendar parts of e-d-s:

http://www.omesc.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=35


> I'm interested in extracting the Camel-only parts of a Camel provider
> for distribution in tinymail (which is LGPL).

OK, just bear in mind that Brutus is GPL.


> I understand others are probably also interested in the Exchange
> calendaring and contact pieces and features, but initially I'm not
> interested in any such code or API.

e-b can currently do mail, calendaring and tasks. More features are in
the works.


> I was planning to take a look at evolution-exchange(/camel) but if
> Brutus is a better solution (if you can convince me), I'm not afraid of
> picking that.

I don't know if I can convince you but I'll try ;-)

e-e is based upon WebDAV while e-b is based upon Extended MAPI. 

I must first say that I've never used the original e-e connector so
everything that I say about it should be taken with a big grain of salt.

Anyway, I've been *told* that e-b parforms much better and is more
stable. It is also a lot easier to develop with e-b as the Brutus API is
very close to MAPI as documented on MSDN. You should therefore expect
e-b to be easier to maintain and extend than e-e. 


> Note that a requirement is that it has to compile and work on multiple
> architectures. Including ARM.

I've tested e-b on i386 and amd64. I expect it to build and run on any
architecture with a reasonable GNU tool chain.


>  It's memory consumption shouldn't be
> extremely bad (if it reuses the CamelFolderSummary pieces, the mmap
> technique can probably be adapted in the Brutus Camel implementation,
> just like what I did for the other Camel providers a few weeks ago).
> 
> I have already completed this little-patch for evolution-exchange. I
> haven't yet tested it.

A patch is always welcome :-)


> Support for Exchange isn't a top priority, but its most certainly a nice
> to have feature to bring to mobile devices and embedded appliances
> (which is the focus group of tinymail at this moment).
> 
> Let me know what you think?

I'll help you as much as possible should you decide to take a closer
look at e-b. Just yell or ask and I'll do my best.

Best regards,
  jules