On 14/04/14 08:36, Patrick Ohly wrote: > On Mon, 2014-04-14 at 00:20 +0200, Ove Kåven wrote: >> But what if the server you want to talk to isn't a SyncML server, but a >> WebDAV or ActiveSync server? How is that possible, if SyncEvolution must >> talk to something that understands SyncML? But wait, SyncEvolution >> itself understands SyncML, and can act as server! We can just have >> SyncEvolution talk to itself! A big hack, but it solves the problem. > > Indeed. It came to be out of lack for alternatives (defining and > implementing an entirely new sync protocol is no piece of cake), but it > does the job pretty well (IMHO). I had to extend the sync engine > occasionally (see PBAP and the new caching sync modes) and may have to > do it again, but that was still less work than starting from scratch.
Thank you for your contribution, Ove. Interestingly, I actually find this way of thinking about local sync (that it is a hack to sort of extend SyncML to other protocols) unhelpful. As both you and Patrick have mentioned that, I realise that this is how it came about, but I tend to think it causes additional confusion as it makes non-SyncML protocol access look like more of a special case (with its own rules to be learnt) than is really the case with the (brilliant) way Patrick has implemented it. Of course, I may be unique in this and others may find it very helpful -- just a data point. I prefer to think of local sync as purely an optimisation on a sync which happens between SyncML entities which happen to be on the same system (and which can be completely replaced with a normal SyncML sync if they are on different systems). In the context of SyncEvolution I think of WebDAV and ActiveSync not as sync protocols but primarily as database access protocols, and all the database backends in SyncEvolution as being equal. Of course, I come from an OpenSync/MultiSync background so I tend to think of all the SE backends as equivalent to OpenSync plugins (I even considered writing a GPE backend for SE and would have if I had not decided I would be moving to Jolla, and I also considered using activesyncd as the basis for writing an OpenSync ActiveSync plugin instead of my OWA TCL script -- but OpenSync is dead). Just one person's view, of course. Graham _______________________________________________ SyncEvolution mailing list [email protected] https://lists.syncevolution.org/mailman/listinfo/syncevolution
