[Evolution] Evolution 1.3 (unstable) snapshots for Red Hat 8.0

[Ettore Perazzoli <ettore ximian com>]

Hello,

it is our greatest pleasure to announce that daily snapshots from CVS
of the GNOME 2.0 port of Ximian Evolution (aka Evolution 1.3) are now
available for Red Hat 8.0.

(For those who don't know, Evolution is a GNOME based groupware
application, based so far on GNOME 1.4 but currently being ported to
GNOME 2.  Further information is available at
http://ximian.com/products/evolution/ .)

        * WARNING *

        These snapshots of Evolution are UNSTABLE and
        completely untested.  This means that they will 
        probably crash very often, and possibly eat your 
        mail, calendar, appointments, anything.

        The purpose of this release is to help users to test
        the new code; use at your own risk, but please do
        report the bugs.  :-)


AVAILABILITY

In order to install the snapshots, you have to either use Red Carpet
(Ximian's package managing application) or download the RPM packages
from our FTP site.

Please note that the packages are made to work with your existing
GNOME 2 packages as provided by Red Hat; installing this snapshot will
not change your existing setup nor replace any of the base packages in
your distribution.

Also, the packages are made to be parallel-installable with Evolution
1.2 so you can test Evolution 1.3 but still have the old, stable
version as a backup.


1. Installing through Ximian Red Carpet

The snapshots can be simply installed from the "Evolution Development
Snapshot" channel from Red Carpet.

If you don't have Red Carpet installed, follow the directions at the
following location:

        http://ximian.com/products/redcarpet/download.html

After installing Red Carpet, subscribe to the Evolution Development
Snapshot Channel.  If you are new to installing Evolution with Red
Carpet, see here:

        http://www.ximian.com/products/evolution/download.html

for more detailed installation instructions.


2. Installing from FTP

All the necessary RPMs can be found at the following location:

        ftp://ftp.ximian.com/pub/evolution-devel-snapshot/redhat-80-i386

To install or upgrade, download them to your computer, and then simply
use the standard RPM incantation as root:

        rpm -Uvh *.rpm

(The -devel packages are optional.)

Evolution can then be launched by typing "evolution-1.3" on the
command-line.

The corresponding source RPMs can be downloaded from here:

        ftp://ftp.ximian.com/pub/evolution-devel-snapshot/redhat-80-i386


UPGRADE NOTES

Evolution 1.3 can be installed at the same time as Evolution 1.2.
However, these two versions should never be run at the same time.

If you want to switch from using Evolution 1.2 to using Evolution 1.3,
quit Evolution 1.2, run "killev", then run "evolution-1.3".

If you want to switch from using Evolution 1.3 to using Evolution 1.2,
quit Evolution 1.3, run "killall evolution-wombat", then run
"evolution".

All the data (mail, calendars, contacts) should be visible without any
problems from both Evolution 1.2 and Evolution 1.3; if you experience
any data interoperability problems between the two versions, please
report them as bug.  LDAP configurations and filter/vfolder settings
should also work between Evolution 1.2 and Evolution 1.3 without any
problems.

On the other hand, Evolution 1.2 and Evolution 1.3 will not share user
preferences or mail account/password information.  A better upgrade
procedure preserving the user's settings is planned for the final
release, but for now these need to be manually set up again by the
user.

It is also highly recommended that you make a backup of your 1.2
~/evolution directory before switching to Evolution 1.3 to prevent
data loss.  If you are using POP mail, please consider using the
"Leave messages on server" option to prevent your mail from being
erased on the server after download.  (The option can be changed from
the "Receiving Options" tab of the account editor.)

That being said, the backend code has changed very little in the
migration from GNOME 1.4 to GNOME 2.0, so you should not be risking
very much.  :-)

Please note that Ximian Connector 1.2 will NOT work with Evolution
1.3, and that there are not going to be any public snapshots of Ximian
Connector.


WHAT HAS CHANGED

The plan for Evolution 1.3 is to not add any new major features
compared to Evolution 1.2.  The aim of the upcoming stable release is
to just provide the same functionality as Evolution 1.2, but with
better integration with the GNOME 2 desktop, as well as to take
advantage of the features of the new platform, such as better font
support.  Of course, a bunch of 1.2 bugs have also been fixed during
the process of porting Evolution to GNOME 2.

A major change since version 1.2 is that Evolution 1.3 consists of
only two processes: the front-end ("evolution-1.3") and the
calendar/addressbook data backend ("evolution-wombat").  For this
reason, the old "killev" script is no longer necessary for debugging
purposes.  If things get stuck, just kill these two processes.


REPORTING BUGS

The main purpose of these snapshot is, of course, to gather as much
testing as possible from users.  Your help in testing and submitting
bugs as you find them is highly appreciated.

If Evolution 1.3 crashes, please take the time to submit the bug using
Bug Buddy, trying to fill in as much detail as you can regarding the
circumstances that lead to the crash.

If, on the other hand, you find a problem in the behavior or the
appearance of the application, please use our Bugzilla interface at:

        http://bugzilla.ximian.com/

You can also check if your bug has been reported before by using the
search functionality of Bugzilla:

        http://bugzilla.ximian.com/query.cgi


KNOWN ISSUES

The following problems are already well-known to the team, so please
avoid reporting them into Bugzilla:

    - Drag and Drop on the folder list doesn't work.

    - The performance of the mail component is slower than in
      Evolution 1.2; in particular, text rendering and editing are
      considerably slower.  This issue is related to the migration to
      Pango, and will be addressed before the final release.


CONTRIBUTING

As with all open source projects, we would love to get your patches!
Information for how to have your patches submitted and accepted is
available at the following page:

        http://developer.ximian.com/projects/evolution/contributing.html

You'll probably want to join the following mailing lists:

    * For development discussions, evolution-hackers ximian com   To
      subscribe, send mail to evolution-hackers-request lists ximian com
      with subject "subscribe".

    * For submitting patches, evolution-patches ximian com   To
      subscribe, send mail to
      subscribe-evolution-patches newlists ximian com .


Enjoy!
-- The Evolution Team