[Synce-devel] [SynCE-Users] [Fwd: Installing SynCE]

[Mark Ellis]

Hi!
Could someone please help this gentleman? Don't forget to CC him if you do.
Cheers,
David
---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: Installing SynCE
Date: Thu, December 13, 2007 11:59 am
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hi,

Hi Diederik, and welcome.

I've been looking arround for "ActiveSync" software for Linux. My office
system currently runs openSUSE 10.3 and synce seams to be exactly what I'm
looking for. Nice GUI, good device support and KDE integration.
Unfortunately I'm unable to install it. In fact, the installation baffles
me. I've read
http://synce.sourceforge.net/synce/howto.php
http://www.synce.org/index.php/Installation_Guides
http://www.synce.org/index.php/Using_the_SynCE_plugin_for_MultiSync
I hope you can help me out here, since I really like to install this
software.
Additionally, I hope my comments here will help you improve the SynCE
documentation.

Unfortunately we're very aware that the documentation is poor, out of
date, and downright misleading at times !

* Do I have to compile *all* these packages? Are they all needed, and what
do they do?

No, depending on what you want to do, what GUI you want and what version
of Windows Mobile your device(s) use. The most important question at
this point is which version are you using ?

librtfcomp-1.1.tar.gz

A support library for syncing.

pywbxml-0.1.tar.gz

Essentially another support library for syncing.

synce-gnome-0.10.0.tar.gz

Very simple gnome applet very passworded devices and connection status.

synce-librapi2-0.10.0.tar.gz

Remote function calls to a WM device.

synce-libsynce-0.10.0.tar.gz

Support library for almost everything.

synce-odccm-0.10.0.tar.gz

The latest flavour of the dccm communication daemon, you need one and
only one dccm.

synce-rra-0.10.0.tar.gz

Sync library for pre WM 5 devices.

synce-serial-0.10.0.tar.gz

Connection scripts for pre WM5 devices.

synce-sync-engine-0.10.0.tar.gz

Sync engine for WM5 and later devices, hopefully soon to support pre WM
5.

synce-usb-rndis-lite-0.10.0.tar.gz

One type of kernel module for WM5 and later.

synce-usb-rndis-ng-0.10.0.tar.gz

The other type of kernel module for WM5 and later.

synce-vdccm-0.10.0.tar.gz

The previous flavour of dccm communication daemon, no less functional
than odccm, and required if you want to properly use kde integration.

wbxml2-0.9.2+svn49synce.tar.gz

Some more sync stuff.

synce-kde-0.9.1.tar.gz

Kde apps and modules, including a panel applet (sorry about the terms,
I'm a gnome user), KIO module etc.

* I can't find good SynCE packages at all. Is there a reason why SynCE isn't
into many distributions yet?

Probably the same reason for the documentation, we don't have enough
people to do it. There is some current movement on this however, at
least for debian/ubuntu and gentoo. I don't recall anyone voicing plans
for rpm based however.

* Would it be possible for you to ease this huge gap if there are no
packages?
The foresight to install a complete development environment (100MB) at an
office machine is not exactly my definition of fun ;-)

There are some svn snapshot debs at http://www.mpellis.org.uk/debian

You could temporary provide packages using Autopackage, or some standard
RPM's compiled in a base system like Slackware 10.0. While it's not ideal,
it would make it easier to install as long as distributions don't provide
packages. This could boost the popularity of your project a lot. Note that
your rpm package is downloaded 10x times more often then the
tar.gzpackages! ;-)
* Is the kernel module setup really needed at all nowadays?
The idea to compile a kernel module scared me off - even though I compiled a
lot of kernels in the past at Slackware/Gentoo systems. I don't want to
mess-up this system. The ipaq driver is fortunately installed as module in
openSUSE by default, so I'm safe here. But I wonder if you really have to
display this advanced topic so in-your-face as if you can't install without
compiling the kernel.

There is an effort being made to get the kernel modules into the main
tree. If you are only using pre WM5 devices however, ipaq should do you
fine.

Greetings,
Diederik

I hope at least you now have more idea of what you may need.
Unfortunately it is somewhat painful a process at the moment, but does
work once you get there.

Let us know what version devices you are using and we'll be able to make
more concrete suggestions.

Mark