[Evolution-hackers] Introduction and Questions

[Ross Boylan <ross biostat ucsf edu>]

Hi.  I've been getting into the code of evolution recently, and am thinking of 
doing a bit more to see if I can get it working OK for my situation.  I have 
an IMAP mailbox which is very large, both in terms of folders (over 100) and 
messages (the largest folder has >300,000 messages; my INBOX has about 
22,000).

None of the email clients I've tried cope with this very well.  Since I've 
been using evo at work in a similar setup (cyrus server, though not quite as 
big), I thought it might be the best to try to tweak.  The problems I've had 
so far involve setup activities rather than core functionaility.  First, 
evolution couldn't create the account (solved); second I've had problems 
getting it to show all of my subfolders.

My narrow question is how to debug evolution.  When I launched evolution in 
gdb evolution (the GUI) came up, and then the debugger told me the process 
had exited (though the GUI was up and running).  I believe the initial 
process does some kind of activation of the "real" process and then exits.

I know I can attach to the second process, but I think the stuff I need to see 
happens at startup.  So how can I get a debugger on the startup process of 
the "real" evolution?

I tried to search the archive, but the search function seems broken: it 
searches everything, even though it says "search this list only."

Also, evolution seems to have two presences on the web: a web site and a wiki.  
The developer stuff on the web site is old, and has no pointers to the newer 
stuff that I could find.  It would be good if it did.

I have some broader questions too, if anyone has any comments on them.

What version to start with?  I'm on Debian GNU/Linux, which currently has evo 
2.6.  I notice that's a bit dated (although I did see that a few months ago 
some of the Debian packagers were interested in making a more recent 
version).  I've been working from the Debian version.  Does that version, the 
last stable release (from evo, not Debian), or svn head make the most sense 
to work from?  (BTW, the one bug I fixed was one that was already fixed 
post-2.6).

Mission Impossible?  Am I likely to get anywhere without spending lots of 
time?  I'm a professional software developer, but I'm not familiar with 
GNOME, and this is clearly a complex application.

Mission Advisable?  If I get past the setup hurdles, is evolution likely to be 
able to handle the mail store I described?

How do I find out which of the imap store's code I'm actually using?

Thanks.
Ross Boylan