KDE 4.2 and KPilot Status
Tuesday August 5, 2008
Bertjan has already done a very nice job of giving an overview of where we are with this year’s GSOC project and where KPilot is in general. I wanted to add a couple of things to this train of thought too…
First off, this is the second year that I’ve worked with Bertjan on a Google Summer of Code project and I have thoroughly enjoyed both years. Last year, our goal was to create a base conduit framework that could be used to unify KPilot’s conduit code and push down into it all of the synchronization logic that was previously spread across all of the individual conduits. This was a success, and Bertjan also wrote a new Keyring conduit that implemented the new base conduit infrastructure. Unfortunately, these were dark days for KPilot and neither Bertjan nor I nor Adriaan had any more time to give to our little KPilot friend. KPilot was semi-ported to Qt4/KDE4, but none of our KDE PIM conduits worked. And so KPilot languished pretty much untouched and unloved between last year’s GSOC project and this.
This year, Bertjan has built upon last year’s work with our base conduit core code. He’s ported the contacts, addressbook, and todo conduits to use both the new base conduit infrastructure and the new Akonadi back ends that KDE PIM 4.2 will be using. As a satisfying proof of our design work from last year, I don’t believe that we’ve hit any synch algorithm problems, yet. In addition, Bertjan has done the necessary work to finally have 2-way category synchronization working with KPilot and our conduits, YAY!
As Bertjan said, there’s some rough edges still, 2 weeks away from the conclusion of this year’s SOC project, but we’re hopeful that we’ll be able to iron KPilot’s side of these out before 4.2 is released and also hopeful that our KDE PIM apps will be ported to use Akonadi’s back-end so we can again synchronize between our PIM apps and Palm devices.
Now, there’s a few things I’d like to really ask for help with, so if there is still a KDE Palm community as I have seen glimpses of before, now is the time for you to speak up and help us make KPilot a first-class citizen in the KDE4 world. To put it bluntly, we need the KPilot community to help or we won’t make it.
- We need help in testing with devices. Qt4 has changed the way that process threading works and I think I’ve done it right, but have only been able to do very limited testing with a very limited set of devices. I know our configuration/device-detecting wizard is broken and has been for quite some time, so it would be really great if people could help test and send fixes in for this.
- We need help testing our new conduit code. Bertjan has written unit tests (awesome!) and we will be doing ad-hoc testing, but obviously we’ll miss something unless we have the broader KPilot community’s help. If you have time to spare and an old device to test with, please, please help us test the new ToDo, Contacts, and Calendar conduits. The Memofile conduit hasn’t had to change that much, so I’m pretty comfortable with it, but the others are major rewrites.
- We have an awesome little Keyring conduit that we simply don’t have the time to fully test, polish, and support for KDE 4.2, which makes us very sad. It does seem to work, mostly, and Bertjan has even written an almost completely functional Keyring viewer/editor in our KPilot code! But we just don’t have the time and manpower to make it as bullet-proof as we’d like before KDE 4.2 is released. But this is good news! If you use Keyring and would like to help us get this finished, polished, tested, and ready for prime time, we’d LOVE your help! Please let me know!! Unfortunately, if we don’t get the help we need with this, we’ll be forced to disable the Keyring conduit and nobody will know it’s even there. =:(
In addition, let me just add that while Palm devices were once the coolest geek device on the planet (after the Newton went buh-bye, of course), and lots of people were interested in using them and subsequently a higher number of people were interested in coding for and helping out with them, this is definitely not a true statement today. Everybody and their dog is all excited about the iPhone, and I cannot say that I blame them. Palm seems to have totally lost its coolness, geek appeal, good business sense, and anything else that would keep it otherwise relevant in the current technology climate. I won’t digress too much here, but if you’ve ever tried to endure through Opera’s constant crashing of your Treo or Blazer’s general suckiness for a couple of hours while everyone else around you is experiencing pain-free Safari-surfing on their iPhones, you might be able to appreciate the frustration and rage that accompanies said experience.
But back to subject at hand…. The affect that this all has, though, on those of us who are trying to maintain software for the Palm platform (KPilot, here), is that it’s pretty de-motivating when nobody seems to care about the software you’re writing anymore. Synchronization and PIM software is about as un-sexy as you’d want to get, quite honestly, and KPilot seems to be the ugly poster child for it.
So, reiterating my cries for help, if you use and care about KPilot now and in the future, please please please let those of us know who still try to care for the little guy. And if you truly care and have even small amounts of time (and maybe a spare couple of devices to test with), please let us know that too. I’m not asking for people to send me or Bertjan or Adriaan devices. We have some already. What we don’t have is the time and breadth of use cases to adequately test KPilot and make sure that it’s not going to eat your data for lunch, and that’s something we’d really like to not see happen after KPilot is released with KDE 4.2
Thanks for making it through this lengthy post and as a reward, here’s one of Google’s image search results for KPilot (????) =:)
There might be a vicious circle in terms of not knowing if users care and users giving up. I stopped using KPilot about two years ago because of hangs when I tried to config, and weird deletion/duplications, etc. I’ve been using j-pilot for that time. I used to love the KDEPIM apps, but at least j-pilot works. I’d buy a new PIM device (be it PDA,tablet, phone) if I *knew* I could sync it with KDE well. But now know one even seems to care about PDAs.
In any case, I’m interested, but only run Kubuntu releases so don’t know how helpful I would be in testing.
I read your and Betjan’s post on KPilot because I’m very much interested in a working sync solution for KDE. Not for a Palm Pilot though.
I don’t know much details about KPilot and syncing and therefor my question might be ignorant. Wouldn’t it make more sense to go for an OpenSync Plugin than a standalone application?
OpenSync including it’s KDE GUI KitchenSync still needs a lot of work to become a really good syncing suite. I had myself a hard time to get it to work with my Nokia 6300 and Kubuntu. But I kinda hope that OpenSync will someday making syncing a easy and nice experience.
BTW: It’s very sad to say but it has been so much easier to sync my Sharp Zaurus PDA running Linux with an MS Outlook than with KDE PIM or any other PIM on Linux.
And thanks for your work for FOSS! We (users) need guys like you (coder). Hopefully someday I can contribute some work as well.
I never managed to syncronise my Palm Zire 71 (e.g. I was asked to enter my password but it was not password or username protected) and there were too many concurrent tools, hacks and frameworks incompatible with the kernel version I used etc. 4 different frameworks and none of the worked. I really did spent time on this. But when you consider that Palm offers a limited number of devices you wonder why it can’t work out of the box. Its very frustrating and you don’t understand why it doesn’t work.
It shoudl work like this: you have a list of supported hardware and test each device before a new release or get it tested by the person who owns the device. Software that works is sexy. Software that works at least for x but not for y is challenging. But if it does not work perfectly and out of the box for any common device or breaks with a kernel update its no fun. hackish solutions tend to break.
Do the developers have a collection of Palm devices?
@Andre: Hi! Palm actually has a wide variety of devices and every device brings new changes and challenges. And keep in mind that it’s not enough that we support people who have the current line (Treo). We have users who still use and love their Palm IIIe’s. For the current list of supported hardware, see here: http://cvs.codeyard.net/kpilot/hardware.php (it’s more than just a few).
So good to hear that there’s still work on KPilot!
To tell the truth, my past experience with Kpilot was quite disappointing: I tried to sync both my Treo 650 and 680 with the current version and failed miserably – I tried a lot of times over a span of more than one year and then gave up. I filed bug reports, but I don’t think KPilot ever worked correctly (Note, that the normal pilot-link library did work without problems …). Now I’m syncing with Palm Desktop on Windows running in Virtual Box. Not perfect, but …
Yes the Palm community is fading – what a pity. I might jump ship, too in the future, but I’d like to see (and laugh) at Palm’s last shot with Nova….
So, with a dwindling user size and limited developer resources, I’d really welcome if we get _one_ sync system running instead of having five different attempts in a half-running state. I’d backup FreeMinded here, I think the way to go would be OpenSync. Have you considered a cooperation with them? With Kpilot as a great (and working) frontend to OpenSync, this would be awesome!
Anyway, I’d also give a new Kpilot another try. If somebody creates some Kubuntu packages, I’d happily test them with my devices.
Just yesterday I synced 1000 contacts and a big calendar to a Treo680 for a client heading out to a trade show. We couldn’t do it without you! So, thank you a million times over. I’ll help test for a rocking KPilot on 4.2. Yay KDEPIM!
Yes! I am oh so glad to hear kpilot isn’t dead yet. So I can in any case do testing for the new centro and the life drive device. I should also be able to look after the keyring conduit – I just need to get a working development environment… I think I have to see the Technet site. So, if you are interested just let me know.
And thanks for the great work!
@dukat: Your suggestion for KPilot to front-end opensync is a good one and it was actually what I had planned on doing. We just don’t have the developers to do it and after Bertjan’s excellent work for the last 2 SOC’s, I’d say that KPilot finally has a really solid infrastructure that may have obviated the need for opensync.
@Liz: YAY!!! I am _SO_ happy to hear it worked for you!! =:) Thanks for the encouragement!! =:)
@Bernd: Awesome to hear from you too! =:) I would LOVE to have any help we can get with the keyring conduit. If you can get working dev environment, that’d be wonderful!! =:) And thanks for the encouragement!! =:)
Oh, and btw I use a Palm TX which doesn’t appear to be listed as a supported device.
As a kde-user since 4 years, I am having a hard time deciding on the right PDA. The Palm devices seem to be the only ones which are supported by k-pilot. I am happy to find your site and to get a sign of activity in k-pilot work.
I am about to get a Palm Centro and I am anxious to find out whether I can get my kadressbook- and korganizer-data across. I’ll let you know!
Hanno (+ the three little Wieses)
It is really nice to hear that there is still work in progress about kpilot. I’ve been using kpilot successfully with my Tungsten T5, but then I stopped using it for some time (just some kind of laziness in general). Yesterday I tried to set it up again but ran into several problems. The first one is that the device node /dev/ttyUSB1 is only root-writable after creation, but I guess I can change that in udev settings – not really a kpilot issue. The more important one is that newly created appointments/todos in korganizer/kontact are not synced to the palm device, whereas changes on existing items are synced as well as newly created items on the palm…
I vaguely remember that I had this problem before but I don’t remember whether I solved it somehow. I do remember that I did some tests and I think that I found out that the issue was related to the user-defined kpilot fields (X-PILOTID and X_PILOTSTAT).
I’m using kpilot 4.9.2-358 on kde 3.5.8 with pilot-link 0.12.3.
I would love to help as far as I can to test kpilot and I would even offer to help develop some parts if my time would allow it. I just want you to know that there’s someone out there who cares about kpilot and who appreciates your work. And maybe I could at least help to solve my specific problem. Maybe you already know that this problem is solved in some development version or you could give me a hint where to look first…
[…] – Would People Let You Take Their Picture for Your Address Book? saved by oojamaa2008-10-04 – Jason Kasper (vanRijn): KDE 4.2 and KPilot Status saved by gerard02008-09-18 – iPhoneSyncFixed day 3 saved by HeatherRasley2008-08-12 – MobileMe […]
Two years ago I bought a Treo 650, because I was certain that I could sync it with my Linuxmachine, using Jpilot. Actually, I like Korganizer and kpilot more, but unlike Jpilot, it sometimes worked, sometimes not. And now it is gone from Kubuntu 8.10 🙁 So yes, please continue work on kpilot.
More in general, syncing PDA’s of any brand is a problem in Linux. I fear the day that my Treo breaks down, and I will have to buy a new phone/PDA, because for the love of me, I would not know which one to buy.
If the kpilot conduits for Korganizer etc. could be the stubs for replacable pda backends, that would be a Good Development. I do not know if that is technically feasible.
paai
I own a Palm Centro, and I would be happy to test! Unfortunately I’m using Ubuntu 8.10, and as Mr. Paijmans said KPilot seems to be gone. ^.^;
Is there any way that I could install it manually?
Hi Jared! Unfortunately, you need KDE 4.2 beta2 or better to test the new KPilot. I’m pretty sure there are packages for Ubuntu, but I don’t know where.
Last week I installed the last kpilot for kde4 beta 2, but it
would not sync because of outdated conduits. Back to square one…
Paai
@hans: what was the exact error that you got?
paai@stettin:~/Documents$ cat kpilot.log
Version: KPilot 5.2.0-beta1 (KDE 4.2.0)
Version: pilot-link 0.12.3
Version: KDE 4.1.85 (KDE 4.1.85 (KDE 4.2 Beta2))
Version: Qt 4.4.3
HotSync Log
18:55:40 Starting the KPilot daemon …
18:55:40 Daemon started.
18:55:40 Daemon status is `not running’
18:55:41 Next HotSync will be: HotSync. Please press the HotSync button.
18:55:41 Pilot device usb: does not exist. Probably it is a USB device and will appear during a HotSync.
18:56:05 Checking last PC…
18:56:05 KPilot 5.2.0-beta1 (KDE 4.2.0) HotSync starting…
18:56:05 Using encoding ISO-8859-15 on the handheld.
18:56:05 Conduit kpilot-conduit-calendar has wrong version (4,294,967,295).
18:56:05 The conduit kpilot-conduit-calendar could not be executed.
18:56:05 End of HotSync
18:56:06 Next HotSync will be: HotSync. Please press the HotSync button.
18:56:07 HotSync Completed.
Hi @hans,
In the future, please open a bug report for something like this at http://bugs.kde.org, since I can’t fix it if I don’t know about it. =:) But in this case, please tell me how you installed KPilot. It looks like you still have an old version of kpilot installed or something.
Jason,
Kpilot suddenly showed up in Adept some time after I installed KDE 4.2 and it installed without probems . That was after earlier posts on movingparts.net, so I thought that you had put it in some repository.
BTW: bugs.kde.org never seems to work for me. But I can mail you directly if you ‘d like me to.
Paai
Hi again, @hans!
Yes, please e-mail me at vR@movingparts.net so we can work through this. It would be best if you created an account for yourself at bugs.kde.org so we have a way of tracking it though.
Thanks!
I’m a Palm Zire 31 user who had been syncing with KPilot for several years now. I recently upgraded to Kubuntu 8.10 (with KDE 4.1) and was quite disappointed to see it missing from the KDE PIM package install.
While we might not say it much, the efforts of the KMail coders are greatly appreciated, and important to many of us quite types out there. I really hope that the software continues to be maintained.
Thank you!