Evolution added support for EteSync-2.0

Welcome everyone, in the past weeks, EteSync made some major announcements one of them is releasing EteSync-2.0 which brings new features and made major improvements over EteSync-1.0, you can read more about what the new version brings and how to migrate your EteSync account to EteSync-2.0 from their blog post here.

And now I am happy to announce that the Evolution-EteSync module has been upgraded to use the new EteSync-2.0 protocol which is built under Etebase and the module is now under GNOME repo, you can check it here.

This guide will show you how to install the module and how to use it with Evolution, most of the things are as before except that now, you don’t need to enter an encryption password plus other major performance boost.

Contents

• Installing the module.
• Adding EteSync account.
• Adding data inside a collection.
• Adding a new collection.
• Rename or change a collection color.
• Running your own instance (self-host).

Installing the module

Pre-built packages

Arch:

• install libetebase from here.
• Install Evolution-etesync arch package.

Fedora/CentOS (COPR):

• dnf copr enable daftaupe/etesync-rs
• dnf install libetebase
• dnf install evolution-etesync

Install from sources

• Install Etebase library.
  • git clone https://github.com/etesync/libetebase.git
  • cd libetebase
  • make && sudo make install
• Build Evolution-EteSync
  • git clone https://gitlab.gnome.org/nourmat/evolution-etesync.git
  • git checkout EteSync-2.0
  • Then follow the ReadMe instruction in the repo to continue installing the module.

Note: You can head to the community chat if you faced any issues during the installation of the module.

Adding EteSync account

After installing the module, obviously you’ll need an EteSync account, if you don’t have one, you can create one from EteSync website.

The steps are very simple.

1. click on the arrow next to “New” button
2. choose “Collection Account”
3. Enter your email/username.
4. Choose “Look up for an EteSync account”
5. Enter your password.

Adding data inside a collection

In this example I am adding an appointment to a calendar of mine.

Adding new collection

EteSync supports three types of collections (Address-book, Calendars and Task lists) and recetly they added Etesync notes (not yet supported in Evolution).
There are two ways to add new collections in Evolution.

First is from “New” menu

Second is choosing category from the bottom-left area (here it is Contacts), right clicking on the account and choose “New address-book/calendar/task list”

Rename or change a collection color

Just right click on the collection (address-book, calendar or task list), select properties then you can rename or change color, then click ok.

Running your own instance (self-host)

This part is a little advanced. Since EteSync has it’s code open-source so anyone can use the server code to easily self-host his own server but it comes with less benefit, however, if you wish to do so, please follow the instructions here.

After you have successfully set up your own instance, and verified it works by connecting to it from the browser, you can follow the steps do add an account while hosting your own server.

In this example I am self hosting the server with my localhost url on port 8000 (http://127.0.0.1:8000)

Hope these instruction help 😀