Hello everybody, I’m crossposting this on SyncEvolution and Genesis mailing lists, as it might be interesting for all.
I am currently thinking about the future direction of Genesis development. Genesis started with very limited aims: I didn’t want to open a terminal window in order to execute syncevolution, so Genesis provided a notification area icon which could start syncs and informed about the results using libnotify. Since syncevolution didn’t have a GUI, a simple setup assistant was added to make it easier to get started with SyncEvolution. And Genesis allowed for automated syncs. The situation has changed, though. SyncEvolution now ships its own GUI, sync-ui. Automated syncs are in the syncevolution core. And SyncEvolution grows quite fast feature-wise, e.g. Bluetooth sync, HTTP-Server support, etc. This leads to a situation where I want to think about the future of Genesis. I can think of two possible directions: 1. Make Genesis a full SyncEvolution GUI, which can serve as a replacement for sync-ui. Since sync-ui is tailored towards Netbooks and looks a bit awkward in a standard GNOME environment, having a more desktop-like alternative might be appreciated. David’s current work on an Account Manager for Genesis leads in this direction, but quite a lot of effort would be needed in order to make Genesis nearly as complete as sync-ui. (Most visible: Bluetooh support, mostly invisible, but important: Error handling.) 2. Go back to the roots and leave everything else to sync-ui. Genesis could limit itself to providing a status icon for quick access and provide notifications. It should then integrate tighter with sync-ui (e.g., show notifications also for sync-ui triggered syncs, open sync-ui for configuration tasks, etc.). First work is done by switching to D-Bus for SE session handling. I currently tend towards the second option. My time for working on Genesis is limited, and so it makes sense not to duplicate the work that already was made for sync-ui. But it would also be possible to split Genesis’ current features into two separate components: A small status +notification app and a stand-alone application with account management and all. Before I definitely decide on this, I would like to hear your opinion: As developers, but even more as users. What would be your favorite Genesis? And if anyone wants to work on Genesis, in one direction or the other, help is always appreciated. Cheers, Frederik _______________________________________________ SyncEvolution mailing list SyncEvolution@syncevolution.org http://lists.syncevolution.org/listinfo/syncevolution