I'm the developer of SyncEvolution (http://syncevolution.org). A user has reported a problem in private email which points towards evolution-couchdb as the root cause.
SyncEvolution uses the REV and LAST-MODIFIED properties to identify updated contacts resp. events and tasks. This was discussed on the Evolution hackers mailing list. The general consensus was that this is the right approach and that backends should support the necessary semantic (= fields updated automatically by backend each time a change is made). An implementation of new API calls is in the pipeline which will make it safe to edit items while a sync is running, based on this semantic. For details, see:
http://<email address hidden>/msg03029.html
According to the error messages encountered by the user, the evolution-couchdb address book does not support the REV property:
[ERROR] addressbook: contact entry without REV: 010cb345b24a0841e3ff478abeaa363f
This break syncs with SyncEvolution on Ubuntu 9.10 in the default configuration. SyncEvolution picks up the Couch DB address book as default, because it comes first in the list of configured address books (e_book_get_addressbooks()).
There are three solutions:
- support REV in the backend (best solution, would allow to synchronize against SyncML servers)
- change the order of address books so that the first listed address book is the normal, local one (only works for users who continue to keep their contacts there)
- blacklist the couchdb backend in SyncEvolution and tell users that it is not supported (undesirable, because once REV is supported, the backend would still be blacklisted)
I haven't checked this myself. I don't know whether calendars + LAST-MODIFIED are also affected.
Just to clarify;
change the order of address books so that the first listed address book is the normal, local one (only works for users who continue to keep their contacts there)
using gconf-editor en edit this
/apps/evolution