Akonadi EWS resource - bugfix release 0.8.1

[Krzysztof Nowicki]

On niedziela, 30 października 2016 10:41:44 CET Raymond Wooninck wrote:
> On Saturday 29 October 2016 23:10:40 CET Krzysztof Nowicki wrote:
> > As for the crash during startup, could you send me the stack dump from
> > drkonqi and the log? You should be able to find it in the systemd journal
> > or in ~/.xsession-errors if you're not using systemd.
> 
> Hi Chris,
> 
> It seems that I have no alternative than the remove the resource and start
> from the beginning again. The resource fails to synchronize and ends with
> the following error in the konsole:
> 
> log_ews_resource_proto: data KIO::TransferJob(0x48e4450) ""
> 
> 
> Shortly after the resource wants to continue:
> log_ews_resource: Streaming request timeout - restarting
> 
> but then crashes directly after
> 
> log_ews_resource_proto: data KIO::TransferJob(0x208c4b0) ""
> 
> 
> After this the inbox is still not showing the new emails and starting
> another mail check, starts everything from the beginning again, with
> unfortunately the same result.
> 
> I don't know if you had a look at the ews resource for Evolution, but it
> would go good to compare methodologies here. The only way I can see is that
> something goes terribly wrong with the ews resource for akonadi, but I am
> not sure if that is due to Akonadi or to the ews resource itself. But for
> now, I will go back to Evolution as that a working Exchange account is a
> must for me.
> 
> But please let me know if there are any updates to improve the current
> situation and I would be more than happy to test again. (Either through the
> git repo or by sending me direct patches).
> 
> I really really hope that this resource will reach a good working state, as
> that the EWS is a big miss in the KDE world.
> 
> Thanks
> 
> Regards
> 
> Raymond

Hi Raymond,

The problem with syncing is quite complex and requirements imposed by Akonadi 
also add to it. From the EWS side there is a way to incrementally sync folders 
by submitting a cookie with a state captured by the last sync. Such an 
operation will retrieve only information about what has changed in that 
folder. The Akonadi EWS resource makes use of this feature. Unfortunately 
Akonadi itself can sometimes go out of sync with the state on the Exchange 
server and only relying on this cookie would cause missing or excess items to 
appear in folders. Therefore Akonadi EWS has some additional checks which - 
when failed - invalidate the state and force a full sync.

There is definitely room for improvement there, but it requires more work.

My plan for now is to work on a fake Exchange server that would allow me to 
run sandboxed automated tests, which should expose such buggy scenarios and 
allow me to work on fixes. This is however a whole subproject and will take 
some time.

I'll let you know once I make some improvements there.

Regards
Chris