Bug 321343

Summary:	Vcard Directory Akonadi resource: Enable changes-by-other-programs monitoring
Product:	[Applications] kaddressbook	Reporter:	Jose Medellin <jfmc2>
Component:	general	Assignee:	Daniel Vrátil <dvratil>
Status:	RESOLVED UNMAINTAINED
Severity:	normal	CC:	dhit, dvratil, henk.vanvelden, kdenis, tokoe
Priority:	NOR
Version:	4.9
Target Milestone:	---
Platform:	Ubuntu
OS:	Linux
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Jose Medellin 2013-06-19 03:45:08 UTC

Using a VCard Directory resource for kaddressbook was in the 3.X era the easiest way to share an addressbook among users.

Now that Akonadi handles the resource, it looks as if a handled-by-akonadi Database is created and the actual VCard files are used as some sort of back-up.

When a second user changes a contact, the Vcard file is changed but the first user doesn't notice this change and therefore doesn't update its Akonadi resource.

There was some discussion about it in:
http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.kde.users.pim/21477

Kevin Kramer, in what could sum it all, said:
"In theory this could be handled very similar to how the maildir handler
manages its directories, i.e. monitor for changes by other programs. Limited
man power has so far not allowed to apply those enchancements to the vcard
directory handler yet."

**This could be a bug if thinking of it working "right" in version 3.5. There's another bug (right clicking an akonadi vcard directory resource and clicking refresh doesn't re-read VCard files), but I'm away from my computer. Will report that one later when I can confirm if a qdbus manual command actually re-reads the VCard files and see if it's a bug in the UI or if it's a dbus bug.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Add a VCard Directory resource for user A
2. Add a VCard Directory resource for user B pointing to the same directory
3. User B changes a contact detail in the aforementioned resource
Actual Results:
4. User A doesn't get the changes User B made

Expected Results:
4. Akonadi detects that there was a change in the files and updates the information in its local database

Comment 1 hcvv 2013-06-19 18:38:26 UTC

This is one of the things that stops us from using new Kmail. We use such VCar directories remote mounted via NFS as well as local by several users. Linux is a multi user system. When this does not function (and it did, it is a regression), we really have a problem in using Linux for with KDE as a PIM implementation.

Comment 2 Charly 2013-10-06 18:24:20 UTC

I fear that there is an even more severe underlying problem: 
   If you delete a contact, the corresponding file in the Vcard-directory is not deleted and the contact is recreated if you reload the directory.

Background:
We also want to use the VCARD Directory to share contacts.
"Update Adress Book Folder F5" ist not sufficient to synchronize, therefore we use 
"Adress Book Properties" and reload the directory to synchronize.

As we merged contacts we had duplicate entries (different IDs) and wanted to delete one of them.
This resulted in the problem described above. 
(Workaround is to change the contact you actually want to delete, so that it is the last changed content of the directory and then manually delete the file).

Kontact Version 4.8.5
Ubuntu-Linux: 3.2.0-30-generic #48-Ubuntu

Comment 3 Denis Kurz 2016-09-24 20:53:12 UTC

This bug has only been reported for versions before 4.14, which have been unsupported for at least two years now. Can anyone tell if this bug still present?

If noone confirms this bug for a Framework-based version of kaddressbook (version 5.0 or later, as part of KDE Applications 15.08 or later), it gets closed in about three months.

Comment 4 Jose Medellin 2016-09-25 00:15:15 UTC

Hey, there..!

I don't know about frameworks or anything.. I just forgot to come back here to comment that this bug was fixed.. Here are the references:
https://git.reviewboard.kde.org/r/111149/
https://quickgit.kde.org/?p=kdepim-runtime.git&a=commit&h=104c51d274f20e704c877b6a50e3f61eb3a5c118

Have to give credit for pointing out it was being fixed to user "Einar" here:
https://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=215&t=110892&sid=debaf87f3b3f1fa74c79e6ba41b466d3&start=15

Anyway.. I leave this info here for you to close the bug or find out if it'sa problem in the 5.0 version of kaddressbook (I haven't migrated and still in 4.14 so I can only confirm it works at that version)

Comment 5 Denis Kurz 2017-01-07 23:10:23 UTC

Just as announced in my last comment, I close this bug. If you encounter it again in a recent version (at least 5.0 aka 15.08), please open a new one unless it already exists. Thank you for all your input.