Re: [Evolution] Compiling on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS?

[Ralf Mardorf <silver bullet zoho com>]

On Tue, 2018-04-10 at 18:47 +0100, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
> OTOH Ubuntu *may* improve general Gnome support in the future now that it
> has abandoned Unity.

I should be able to clarify the issue, since I'm using Ubuntu to help
novices and Arch Linux for myself.

[root@archlinux rocketmouse]# lsb_release -a
LSB Version:    1.4
Distributor ID: Arch
Description:    Arch Linux
Release:        rolling
Codename:       n/a
[root@archlinux rocketmouse]# systemd-nspawn -qD /mnt/moonstudio lsb_release -a
LSB Version:    
core-9.20160110ubuntu0.2-amd64:core-9.20160110ubuntu0.2-noarch:security-9.20160110ubuntu0.2-amd64:security-9.20160110ubuntu0.2-noarch
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description:    Ubuntu 16.04.4 LTS
Release:        16.04
Codename:       xenial

As you could see at https://packages.ubuntu.com/bionic/evolution , it
even is in the "universe" repository for "bionic", aka 18.04 LTS, which
will be released this month, see https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases .

"Universe

The universe component is a snapshot of the free, open-source, and Linux
world. It houses almost every piece of open-source software, all built
from a range of public sources. Canonical does not provide a guarantee
of regular security updates for software in the universe component, but
will provide these where they are made available by the community. Users
should understand the risk inherent in using these packages. Popular or
well supported pieces of software will move from universe into main if
they are backed by maintainers willing to meet the standards set by the
Ubuntu team." - https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Repositories#Universe

"Main

The main component contains applications that are free software, can be
freely redistributed and are fully supported by the Ubuntu team. This
includes the most popular and most reliable open-source applications
available, many of which are included by default when you install
Ubuntu. Software in main includes a hand-selected list of applications
that the Ubuntu developers, community and users feel are most important,
and that the Ubuntu security and distribution team are willing to
support. When you install software from the main component, you are
assured that the software will come with security updates and that
commercial technical support is available from Canonical."
- https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Repositories#Universe

IIRC it was always Thunderbird that was in "Main" and that was the
default MUA provided by a default Ubuntu desktop install, IIRC already
before Unity, when IIRC GNOME2 was the default desktop environment.

We could assume that Ubuntu will not care much better about Evolution in
the future. They much likely will continue the tendency to provide not
only old versions, but also broken Evolution packages and building our
own packages would either fail due to dependency issues or to snappy and
Co. container vs host install issues. A developer might be able to link
against static libs and install to /opt. I'm not a developer ;).