Re: [Evolution-hackers] evolution and ldap contacts

[Srinivasa Ragavan <sragavan novell com>]

On Fri, 2008-06-06 at 11:17 +0200, Thomas Vander Stichele wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I've been trying in my spare time to dip my feet in the LDAP contacts
> backend because, well, there's lots of stuff that it does wrong for me
> to the point where it's close to unusable in my real life use.
> 
> I'm starting small, and I have some questions that I've already asked
> various people IRL or on IRC, but nobody seems to have a good idea, so I
> thought I'd join and ask here instead.
> 
> 1) Does anyone know why the LDAP backend first does an anonymous bind
> (which my servers for obvious reasons don't allow) to decide if the
> server is up at all ? I don't see the point of not using the credentials
> configured here.
If the credentials are there already, it may not make sense to do a anon
bind. But I donno much history behind the code there.
> 
> 2) Is there anything in evolution checeking the
> GNOME_Evolution_Addressbook_CallStatus returned from some of the calls ?
> It is hugely annoying to not have any clue at all *why* a contact
> backend fails.  It got slightly better in evo 2.22 (which shows "Error
> loading addressbook" in the widget you get when you click To/CC/Bcc) but
> not by much.  Where should I go dig in the Evolution code to show some
> useful error messages because of CallStatus returns ?
The best bet is to debug out from EDS. Generic error returns from eds
are shown with that message iirc. See where it returns that message and
pro'lly you 'll know there.
> 
> 3) One of the possible reasons of failure for an LDAP backend is not
> having the certificate installed, which is an especially important part
> to warn about and provide a solution for.  Should I reuse an existing
> CallStatus (like AuthenticationFailed) or add one for this case ?
> 
You can use it. 

> 4) Anyone have an idea why right-clicking on an address in a mail,
> adding it to addressbook, then selecting an LDAP backend, claims that
> the backend is readonly, while it works fine when I go to it in the
> contacts view ? My eds debug console shows no LDAP activity meanwhile,
> it's not even trying to write to the LDAP server.  This is new in 2.22 -
> I didn't have this behaviour in previous releases.
> 

You can look at
addressbook/gui/contact-editor/e-contact-quick-add.c:merge_cb that seem
to emit the error.

-Srini