Win32 binaries of Evolution (2006-06-19)
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The evolution and evolution-data-server zipfiles contain "beta"
quality releases of Evolution and Evolution-Data-Server for
Windows. The zipfiles with a "-dev-" in the name are developer
packages and not needed to just run Evolution. The .tar.gz files
contain the source code, as the versions with a timestamp are CVS
snapshots.

Running Evolution requires practially everything else here, in the
dependencies subfolder and in the
/pub/gnome/platform/2.14/2.14.2/win32 folder and its dependencies
subfolder. (Just running Evolution does not require the developer
packages. They are needed only when building software that uses the
corresponding GNOME libraries.)

Unzip all necessary zipfiles in the same folder, let's call it
<prefix>. Add <prefix>\lib\evolution\2.6\components and <prefix>\bin
to your PATH. Run evolution-2.6.exe. It should work fine even if
<prefix> contains spaces or non-ASCII characters.

The executables are built as console executables. I know this means
that if you run them by double-clicking, you get an ugly console
window. I do know how to build them as GUI executables instead, but I
feel it is at this stage more important to see any error messages that
might get printed. Please don't call console windows "DOS boxes"...

It might be a good idea to check the archives of the
evolution-win32-devel mailing list
http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?forum=evolution-win32-devel
for hints.

Usually I can be found on the #evolution channel on GimpNet.

There are some known problems with the binaries here:

- The gconfd-2, bonobo-activation-server, evolution-data-server-1.6
and evolution-alarm-notify processes stay running even if after you
quit Evolution. This is by design, and how things are supposed to
be. But perhaps on Windows it would be better if they would go away
automatically, at least after a while. It shouldn't hurt to kill these
processes.

- There might be bogus state left behind in the orbit-%USERNAME% and
gconfd-%USERNAME% folders in your %TEMP% folder, and in the .gconfd
folder in your HOME (Documents and Settings\%USERNAME% usually). If
you notice that starting Evolution takes longer and longer, it's best
to clean out these files after quitting evolution before running it
again.

- POP (and presumably IMAP) mailboxes using non-default port numbers
don't work. Evolution tries to create a folder for the mailbox that
has a colon in the name, which is not possible on Windows. This will
be fixed eventually.

- TLS-protected GroupWise mailboxes don't work. The GroupWise provider
uses libsoup which would use gnutls for TLS, but gnutls hasn't been
ported to Win32.

A good idea would be to write a small .bat file (of VB script, or
whatever) that kills off any leftover processes mentioned and cleans
the state folders, and run that once in a while.

In case you want to redistribute Evolution and GNOME software
binaries, for instance in the form of an installer, please make sure
that you follow the license and make the corresponding sources
available from the same site. It it not enough to just point to
ftp.gnome.org and its mirrors.

--Tor Lillqvist tml@novell.com