[Evolution-hackers] Developing an EPlugin for Opportunistic Network Message Delivery

[Giacomo Ghidini <gia ghidini gmail com>]

Hello everyone!

As part of my research in opportunistic networking I've designed with
fellow students a routing protocol to deliver messages (from now on I
use the terms "message" and "email" interchangeably) in absence of any
kind of network access which relies only on direct contacts (through
basic wireless access interfaces) between nodes and on the fact that
nodes are mobile (think of a user carrying his/her laptop/netbook
around) and thus can forward a message from the source to the
destination by a series of direct contact exchanges.

Such a routing protocol is thought to be useful in a community
environment such as a college campus, a hospital or a company
headquarters where there is a rather large group of users who move
around the area and can carry messages on behalf of senders to the
destinations.

Now we'd like to implement our protocol to analyze its overall
performance and instead of recreating a message client application we
think it might be much more interesting developing it as a plugin for an
already existing email client application, thus being able to leverage
on the already available email creation, calendar and address book
subsystems. Then we could focus on the direct contact exchange and
routing protocol implementation.

I've looked into the online information for EPlugin development but I
still have a few doubts as how to get started with my own EPlugin:

      * Where can I find a getting started tutorial that describes how
        to develop a simple EPlugin and how to hook up into EVolution's
        email creation, calendar and address book subsystems?
      * What are the limitations related to hooking into Evolution
        (perhaps, hook ups are missing for certain objects)?
      * What should my EPlugin project directory be organized?
      * Can I use C, C++, C# w/ Mono, any other languages/platform?
      * How do I build my EPlugin?
      * How do I add an EPlugin to an existing Evolution installation?

Once we'll have the EPlugin ready, we plan to make it available to users
on our campus or at other communities to collect performance data for
our analysis.

Of course, if anybody within the Evolution development community is
interested in participating in the development of this EPlugin helping
us novices, that will be very much appreciated and hopefully also a very
interesting experience.

I hope I could make my point clear enough in this email but please, feel
free to get back to me with any question or suggestion.

BTW, I do use Evolution as my email, address book and calendar
application on Ubuntu ;-)

Looking forward to your help I thank you in advance,

Gia

-- 

Giacomo Ghidini, PhD Student              (gia ghidini gmail com)

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Center for Research in Wireless Mobility and Networking (CReWMaN)
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
University of Texas at Arlington

500 W First St WH 411
Arlington, TX 76010

Tel.: +1 817 272 7409
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