KDE PIM/Akonadi

Akonadi TODO

The following list contains the things which need to be done for Akonadi.

Note: The person noted in the "Contact" column is not necessarily the one implementing that feature, but the one who can tell you what to do and how to help, i.e. you can also contribute to those tasks ;-)

Core

Urgent tasks that need to be finished for the KDE 4.1 release (May 19th):

Status	Item	Description	Contact
IN PROGRESS	Item size	Needed by Mailody	<[email protected]>
TO DO	Payload serialization format versioning	see below	<Volker>
TO DO	Item streaming in ItemSync/ResourceBase	As discussed in Osnabrueck	<Tom>
DONE	API for additional item parts	As discussed in Osnabruck	<Volker/Tobias>
DONE	Infrastructure for showing additional dialogs from agents/resources	As discussed in Osnabrueck	<Tom>
IN PROGRESS	Allow to limit ItemFetchJob to current cache content	Prevents search index feeder agents from downloading all remote data	Volker <[email protected]>
DONE	Fix API for item/collection modifications	See Osnabrueck meeting notes for details	Volker <[email protected]>
TO DO	Error reporting	Akonadi::Job basically has only one error code: Unknown	<Tobias>
TO DO	Plugin Versioning	For serializer plugins, also check using Qt plugin stuff instead of the libkdepim plugin framework	[mailto: <>]

Less urgent tasks

Status	Item	Description	Contact
IN PROGRESS	Tray app	small app to control the server and have a something that can report errors	Toma <[email protected]>
TO DO	Akonadi Artwork	Icon for the tray app	[mailto: <>]
IN PROGRESS	Finish collection model/view	see below	<[email protected]>
DONE	Backup support	Dump & Restore database contents, also useful when upgrading to a newer database version	<[email protected]>
IN PROGRESS	Collection statistics for sub-trees	Provide a CollectionStatus object covering the full sub-tree in the model, allowing accumulated unread counts etc.	<Thomas>
TO DO	Nepomuk integration	Generic Item tag/rate/comment, etc.	<Tom>
TO DO	Account creation wizard	as discussed in Berlin, see below	[mailto: <>]
TO DO	Sync collection tree after creating setting up a resource	see AgentInstanceCreateJob	[mailto: <>]
TO DO	Support standard commands for QUndo framework		[mailto: <>]
TO DO	Conflict detection in resources	See Osnabrueck meeting notes for details	[mailto: <>]
IN PROGRESS	Action framework	see below	Volker <[email protected]>
TO DO	Solid integration	Switch online/offline state in ResourceBase automatically	[mailto: <>]
TO DO	Make unittests work without destroying the production database		[mailto: <>]
TO DO	Fix API docs	The libakonadi move as well as the huge API changes following it broke lots of the docs technical and content-wise	[mailto: <>]

Supported Types

Overview on the current state of support for various types:

Type	Serializer	Multipart Support	Models	Views	Resources	Notes
Email	yes	partial	MessageModel, MessageCollectionModel, threading proxy model	?	maildir, IMAP	threading agent
News	yes (1)	partial (1)	(1)	(1)	NNTP
Contact	yes	no	ContactModel	-	vCard, facebook, KRes
Events	yes	no	EventModel	-	iCal, KRes
Notes	no	no	-	-	-	not started yet
Feeds	no	no	-	-	-	not started yet
Bookmarks	yes	no	-	-	local bookmarks, del.icio.us

(1) see Email

Mail specific extensions

Status	Item	Description	Contact
TO DO	Extend Message Model	Add all required columns, save/restore layout, flag delegate, configurable columns, etc.	[mailto: <>]
TO DO	Share mail flag code	Standard actions, standard flag enum/constants, Nepomuk interaction	[mailto: <>]
TO DO	Extend ENVELOPE	Add more information to the envelope payload part in the serializer plugin, eg. trheading information is missing	[mailto: <>]
TO DO	Fix/finish threading		[mailto: <>]

Event/Todo/Journal specific extensions

Status	Item	Description	Contact
TO DO	Todo proxy model	See KOrganizers To-Do view	<Bruno?>
IN PROGRESS	Subtype identification	See discussion on kde-pim mailinglist	<Kevin?>
TO DO	Agenda view	KOrganizer agenda view based on Akonadi	<Bruno?>
TO DO	Month view	KOrganizer month view based on Akonadi	<Bruno?>
TO DO	Timeline view	KOrganizer timeline view based on Akonadi	[mailto: <>]

Resources, Agents and others

Status	Item	Description	Contact
IN PROGRESS	KResource Akonadi bridge	for applications using KCal or KABC	Kevin <[email protected]>
IN PROGRESS	Akonadi KResource bridge	for data accessed through KCal or KABC resources	Kevin <[email protected]>
TO DO	Expire Agent		[mailto: <>]
TO DO	MBOX Resource		<Thomas>
TO DO	Extend IMAP Resource		[mailto: <>]
TO DO	POP3 Resource		<Thomas>
TO DO	RSS Resource		[mailto: <>]
TO DO	Filter Agent		[mailto: <>]
TO DO	Search		[mailto: <>]
TO DO	Filter Rule GUI	Used by filters and searches	[mailto: <>]

Resource status overview (this should list all resources existing in KDE3 or already under development for Akonadi):

Resource	Retrieve Collections	Retrieve Items	Change Collections	Change Items	Configuration	Notes
iCal	yes (4)	yes (1) (2)	no	yes (5)	yes	does not yet watch for file changes
vCard	yes (4)	yes (1) (2)	no	?	yes	does not yet watch for file changes
maildir	yes (1) (4)	yes (1) (2)	?	?	yes
mbox	no	no	no	no	no	not started yet, code exists in KMail
IMAP	yes (1) (4)?	yes (1) (2)	no	no	no	code exists in kio_imap4 and Mailody, support for extensions: quota, ACL, annotations missing, what about Kolab and Scalix?
POP3	no	no	no	no	no	not started yet,code exists in kio_pop3
NNTP	yes (4)	yes (2)	n/a	n/a	yes	Needs support for local collection names and collection hierarchy
Local Bookmarks	?	?	?	?	(3)	Code in akonadi/resources
OpenChange	?	?	?	?	?	Code in akonadi/resources
Facebook	?	?	?	?	?	Code in playground/pim
del.icio.us	?	?	?	yes	no	Code in playground/pim
KABC	no	yes	no	yes	yes
KCal	no	yes	no	yes	yes

(1) only full sync supported currently, need optimization (2) does not yet honor cache policy (3) still relies on QSettings for configuration and/or doesn't provide configuration over D-Bus (4) does not yet provide correct access control settings (5) only adding new items, not changing existing ones

Akonadi Braindump

Ideas/notes etc. on various open issues in Akonadi.

Akonadi Standard Actions

Idea: Have something like KStandardAction for Akonadi that not only includes the representation of the action but also its state management and the actual operations. Like libakonadi that should be splitted into a generic, type-independent part and be extensible for type-specific actions. This will enable code sharing among many applications and guarantee consistent actions everywhere.

State management: watch selection models of a collection and/or item model.

Use KXMLGUI for context menus in standard views to allow easy extensibility with custom actions.

Generic actions:

• new collection [done]
• new virtual collection
• delete collection [done for single selection]
• copy collection [done]
• cut collection
• paste collection [done]
• synchronize collection [done for single selection]
• synchronize resource
• synchronize everything
• show collection properties dialog [done]
• delete item(s) [done]
• copy item(s) [done]
• cut item(s)
• paste item(s) [done]
• paste native data
• tag item(s)
• comment item
• rate item(s)
• configure resource
• add resource? (would need a type parameter, etc.)
• delete resource
• manage local subscriptions [done]
• move to submenu
• copy to submenu

The list is definitely long enough to make this worthwhile.

Collection Model / Collection View

Ideas/missing features/bugs of the collection model/view:

• Enable/disable status columns
• Show status after the name (see KMail)
• Size column
• Save/restore layout
• Custom collection icons (see KMail, also needed for resource defined special folders (eg. Inbox)
• Status tooltips (see KMail in 3.5.9)
• Quick search
• Favorite folder view as proxy model on top of the normal collection model (FlatCollectionProxyModel might be helpful for there)
• Accumulated statistics (unread, total, size)
• Fix dnd: move/copy/cancel menu always shows up and never has any effect

Compatibility

Notes on how to keep long-term protocol, source and binary compatibility.

• Detect server version in Akonadi::Session, might be useful in case of protocol extensions/changes
• What about database server version updates?
• Versioning or any other kind of serialization format meta data, we'll need that in case of changes in serialization formats (see eg. Robert's compression patch where this is needed)
• We currently use 32 bit ids, probably hard to change later on, is that enough?
• Plugin versioning

Resource API issues

Notes/ideas/complaints about the Akonadi::ResourceBase API:

• Extremely error prone:
  • Scheduler dead-locks when a requested operation is not correctly announced as finished, esp. a problem in error cases.
  • Using the result methods multiple times or when not requested asserts
• Item streaming is missing, requiring all data to be in memory at once
• Non-incremental updates need to know the results of ItemSync to not have to provide all data, even for already existing/unchanged items.

API / BC issues

Smaller stuff that should be fixed before the ABI freeze and is not yet listed above:

• Cleanup the D-Bus format used by NotificationMessage
• No mentioning of "IMAP" in the public API, we are not using IMAP
• Naming and installed location of libraries, headers and executables (see discussion on kde-pim ML)
• Payload part labels are QStrings, attribute types are QByteArray

Deployment issues

• Multiple access: Should multiple Akonadi instances' mysqlds access a single set of data files the mysql will likely corrupt the data. This can happen in any NFS+YP installation where users can log onto any machine and access shared homes. MySQL relies on filesystem locking to prevent multiple access. MySQL multiple instance docu.
• InnoDB tables should not be used on NFS.
• NFS speed: MySQL documentation recommends against locating its data files on network shares.
• AppArmor: Distros' AppArmor profiles prevent MySQL from writing outside its defined data directory (usually /var/lib/mysql). This is a problem at least with *buntu and openSUSE. These will need to be adapted. It is possible to daisy-chain profiles so that MySQL started by Akonadi receives a different profile to MySQL running standalone. An empty profile has all rights. Another possibility is to adapt the general MySQL profile so it can write to ${XDG_DATA_HOME}/akonadi(usually ${HOME/}.local/share/akonadi). Both support for profile chaining and ${HOME} may depend on the version of AppArmor installed. What about SELinux?
• Backup: MySQL data files should not be backed up without telling the mysqld process, otherwise a corrupt backup will be made. LOCK TABLES and FLUSH TABLES at the least. A dump can be made or mysqlhotbackup may be used in some circumstances. We should consider sysadmins' backup techniques when planning/promoting Akonadi, as a simple rsync cronjob with running Akonadi will not work. MySQL backup advice.

Account Creation Wizard

Notes on the resource configuration wizard discussion.

• WizardBase class
• Wizard discovery via .desktop files
• A wizard can configure multiple resources (eg. IMAP + LDAP for Kolab) and non-resources (mailtransport)
• Optionally hide resources completely covered by wizards in the Add Account dialog
• List wizards in the Add Account dialog
• Store Account -> Resources information to offer deletion of depending resources

PostgreSQL datastore support

First review of the akonadi code reveals PGSQL Qt driver is already supported, but the code is not totally ready for it. Some first reading comments about where to patch for supporting PostgreSQL too:

akonadi/server/src/storage/dbinitializer.cpp

• line 201..., ALTER TABLE ADD [UNIQUE] INDEX syntax is MySQL only, better use the common one CREATE [UNIQUE] INDEX ... one [done with revision 789899]
• line 303, QString DbInitializer::sqlType(const QString & type), LONGBLOB is the MySQL type, PostgreSQL will use BYTEA.
• line 362, qFatal("Implement index support for your database!");

 mysql: SHOW INDEXES FROM %1
 pgsql: SELECT c2.relname, i.indisprimary, i.indisunique, i.indisclustered, i.indisvalid, pg_catalog.pg_get_indexdef(i.indexrelid, 0, true), c2.reltablespace
 FROM pg_catalog.pg_class c, pg_catalog.pg_class c2, pg_catalog.pg_index i
 WHERE c.oid = '16713' AND c.oid = i.indrelid AND i.indexrelid = c2.oid
 ORDER BY i.indisprimary DESC, i.indisunique DESC, c2.relname
 
    relname    | indisprimary | indisunique | indisclustered | indisvalid |                       pg_get_indexdef                        | reltablespace
 --------------+--------------+-------------+----------------+------------+--------------------------------------------------------------+---------------
  foo_pkey     | t            | t           | f              | t          | CREATE UNIQUE INDEX foo_pkey ON foo USING btree (id)         |             0
  foo_time_key | f            | t           | f              | t          | CREATE UNIQUE INDEX foo_time_key ON foo USING btree ("time") |             0
 (2 lignes)

akonadi/server/src/storage/datastore.cpp

• line 700, qint64 DataStore::highestPimItemId() const, seems wrong for a concurrent program (SELECT MAX(col) FROM table; is not reliable if another thread is inserting at the same time) : check the callers
• line 794, qint64 DataStore::lastInsertId( const QSqlQuery & query ), PostgreSQL doesn't provide concurrent-bogus last_insert_id, but from 8.2 accepts the syntax INSERT INTO ... RETURNING col1, col2, ...;
• line 806, QString DataStore::dateTimeFromQDateTime( const QDateTime & dateTime ), use PostgreSQL to_char() formatting function for date rather than having Qt do it

KMail Breakdown Plan

The current plan is to put some parts of KMail into a stand-alone library, independent of KMail. This increases code reuse (for example, the message composer could be shared with Mailody) and makes the code a lot easier to maintain and to port to Akonadi.

Status	Item	Description	Contact
TO DO	Bodypart formatters		[mailto: <>]
TO DO	Reader Window		[mailto: <>]
TO DO	Composer: Editor		[mailto: <>]
TO DO	Composer: Message Composer		[mailto: <>]
TO DO	Composer: GUI Window		[mailto: <>]
TO DO	Queue Manager for mailtransport		[mailto: <>]
TO DO	Templates: Core		[mailto: <>]
TO DO	Templates: GUI		[mailto: <>]
TO DO	Port KMCommands		[mailto: <>]
TO DO	Port away from KMMessage and KMFolder* everywhere it is left		[mailto: <>]
TO DO	Migration application for index and other config		[mailto: <>]
TO DO	Port MDNs		[mailto: <>]

The Road to World Domination

Sort of related so the stuff above but with a scope for all of KDE PIM and beyond.

Status	Item	Description	Contact
TO DO	Share identity config GUI parts	eg. the signature configuration widget	[mailto: <>]
TO DO	Mailtransport Agent	Global shared outbox, central mail sending instance	[mailto: <>]
TO DO	Recently sent to support in mailtransport	related to above, based on Akonadi/Nepomuk	[mailto: <>]
TO DO	Composer engine	Shared stuff for KMail/KNode/Mailody: Crypto, editor, editor actions, attachment model, message assembly, etc.	[mailto: <>]

Akonadi FAQ

Where do I find the Akonadi config files?

~/.config/akonadi/

Where does Akonadi store my data?

~/.local/share/akonadi/

Which DBMS does Akonadi use?

So far only MySQL. There is some work on PostgreSQL support going on though.

Why not use sqlite?

We tried. Really. It can't handle the concurrent access very well.

Why not use MySQL/Embedded?

We tried that as well, there are two reasons for not using it: No support for the InnoDB engine (which we need for transaction support) and poor availability (only OpenSUSE provided usable packages, needed a patched QSQL driver).

Do I need a running MySQL server?

No. Akonadi starts it's own local MySQL server. All you need is having the 'mysqld' binary installed (usually found in the mysql-server package of your distribution).

Can Akonadi use a normal MySQL server running on my system?

Yes, it can. You find the corresponding settings in ~/.config/akonadi/akonadiserverrc.

Can a single Akonadi instance be used by multiple users?

No. There has to be one Akonadi server instance per user. However, it is possible to use a shared database server.

Can I access the Akonadi server on a remote machine?

No. Akonadi is not a groupware server. It's a local cache only.