Re: [Evolution-hackers] Rethinking account management

[Matthew Barnes <mbarnes redhat com>]

On Thu, 2010-11-11 at 09:16 +1300, Andrew McMillan wrote:
> Does this mean (for example) that we will be able to have a caldav
> server, with credentials, and then just associate (and maybe
> auto-discover) all of the user's addressbooks, calendars, todo-lists and
> journals which the user has on that server?

I honestly don't know if that's possible with a CalDAV server (I'm just
not familiar enough with CalDAV), but if we're talking about a groupware
service where, for example, suppose I have a Microsoft Exchange account
consisting of an email store, a calendar, a to-do list and a couple
address books; then with this proposal we can now express a hierarchical
relationship between those different data sources and treat them within
Evolution as a single "account", such that I can disable or delete my
Exchange mail account in Preferences and all the other data sources for
that account will automatically follow.

Currently each of our groupware backends has to invent this kind of
account management for itself.  All I'm proposing is a general framework
that backends can utilize to make it easier and more consistent.

Auto-discovery is also up to each backend to implement, and rightfully
so.  But the framework certainly allows for discovered data sources to
be associated with the account.

I hope I answered your question.  Like I said, handling of groupware
accounts is still kinda hand wavy at this point.  Gotta get the simple
cases working first.