Re: [Evolution] Migrating evolution to a new PC

["Patrick O'Callaghan" <poc usb ve>]

On Thu, 2006-12-14 at 02:17 -0800, Cliff Wells wrote:
> There was a time (that I miss a lot), when you could simply copy
> ~/.evolution to a new PC and be done.
>
> I found some instructions that indicated that copying ~/.evolution,
> ~/.gconf2/apps/evolution and ~/.gnome2/Evolution would be sufficient for
> migrating to a new PC.  Unfortunately it wasn't.  Most of my several
> dozen message filters failed with a cryptic error message (I no longer
> have the text of the error) and so I've given up and started recreating
> it all by hand.  

This is becoming a FAQ (I know since I asked it myself a long time
ago :-). The answer is that no, there's no automatic way of doing it
because the filter XML files have a unique id wired into them and all
you can do is recreate them one by one on the new machine.

I guess some public-spirited person could hack up a Perl script to do
this automagically, if they knew how Evo calculates the id, but much
better would be a way to export filter settings to an id-neutral file
and import them again in a different instance of Evo. I for one use up
to three copies of Evo and keeping filters in sync is a PITA.

Sounds like something an experienced developer could knock up in an hour
or two.

> So is there a recommended way of migrating Evolution settings from one
> account to another?  Most importantly filters.  I've yet to have them
> successfully transfer from one PC to another and spending an hour  or
> more setting up new ones doesn't rate high on my list of fun activities.
>
> Also, what is the benefit to using GConf?  It seems like needless
> scattering and obfuscation of application settings, and I'm more than a
> bit curious what the payoff is.

It has some putative benefit if you buy into the whole Gnome environment
(many settings are common to other Gnome apps), but since I use KDE I'm
inclined to agree with you that it just gets in the way.

poc