Win32 binaries of Evolution (2006-06-19) ======================================== 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 . Add \lib\evolution\2.6\components and \bin to your PATH. Run evolution-2.6.exe. It should work fine even if 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