Re: [Evolution-hackers] evolution and ldap contacts

[George Farris <farrisg shaw ca>]

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.
> 
> 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 ?
> 
> 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 ?
> 
> 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.
> 
> 
> Any help on these questions would be much appreciated, because I look
> forward to have a working LDAP contacts backend.
> 

Here is a feature request.  Make the LDAP view return a list of contacts
or at least a partial, user selectable number of contacts and display
them without having to do a manual search.  Basically make it work like
the contacts on the local hard drive.

Thanks