Re: [Evolution] Migrating evolution to a new PC

[Patrick O'Callaghan <poc usb ve>]

On Thu, 2006-12-14 at 08:51 -0800, Cliff Wells wrote:
> Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
> > 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.
> >
> >   
>
> Well, that makes this a sad day for me then.   I'd much rather be a 
> moderately dissatisfied Thunderbird user than an angry Evolution user 
> (which is what I spent yesterday being).   Expecting people to manually 
> recreate filters on new machines is pretty ridiculous.  If I'm going to 
> recreate all my filters by hand one more time, then I'm going to make 
> sure it's the last time.   On the plus side, at least it's clear the Evo 
> developers aren't concerned about user lock-in <wink>.

I feel your pain :-)

> > 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.
> >   
> The usual answer I think is "use server-side filtering", which I agree 
> is ideal if you have that option, but unfortunately it's not an option 
> for most people.

Even in cases where it is an option (e.g. IMAP Sieve), Evo provides
absolutely no support for it.

> > > 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.
> >
> >   
> I use GNOME, but I still fail to see the benefit.  I'm not sure what 
> settings might be shared aside from "I use Evolution as my MUA".  I *do* 
> know that the registry idea was a dismal failure on Windows (even 
> Microsoft has backpedaled a bit from the idea of it as a central 
> repository for application data) so it's unclear to me why GNOME should 
> go ahead and fail at it as well, except perhaps as a test of user 
> patience and loyalty.

I really wouldn't know. The only discussion of Gconf on this list is
when people complain about it or don't realize it's there and have to be
told, such as when they want to set printing fonts and discover they
have to go to some completely different part of the forest to do it.

poc