Hello! I've been wondering whether compilation of the open source libsynthesis and SyncEvolution for Android is possible. There is of course the official Synthesis SDK for Android, which is the better alternative for those who need something which works right away *and* has the Java bindings that are needed for GUI apps on Android. For those who prefer compiling from source and/or want a working SyncML client to play with, keep reading... After some fiddling, I was able to compile both and run syncs with the SyncEvolution file backend. Limitations: * no GUI, only the command line tool * no Java bindings (they are not part of the open source code base) * every exception aborts the program (does not happen during normal runs) Setup: * install Android SDK and NDK * install NDK wrappers (http://umbel.mooo.com/) * ensure that the arm-linux-* binaries from the NDK wrappers are in the PATH * add a symbolic link from arm-linux-pkg-config to /bin/false in the PATH: this prevents calling the build machine's native pkg-config and thus detecting packages which don't exist on Android * download and compile libcurl, using --host=arm-linux as configure flag Compilation of libsynthesis and SyncEvolution uses the normal autotools scripts. The source of libsynthesis required some fixes to compile cleanly on Android. These patches were pushed into the "android" branch on git.moblin.org. SyncEvolution changes for Android were also pushed into an "android" branch. The biggest change is a patch which makes exception handling optional, because that is not supported by the Android compiler and runtime libraries. One change in both repos is for static linking: as you will see below, installing a single binary is fairly easy, so that's how I wanted to compile syncevolution. The Synthesis engine expects to load plugins dynamically. Our previous solution for static linking depended on dlsym(RTLD_DEFAULT) and --export-dynamic. The latter didn't have any effect on the resulting Android executable, therefore I had to find a different solution. I went for specifying the addresses of all plugin functions in the XML config which is generated at runtime. Another complication was SyncEvolution's dependency on Boost header files. They work without exceptions, but some of them use typeinfo(), which is not supported either. As a crude solution (not done 100% correctly for non-Android platforms and with unknown implications for the code which depends on runtime type information) I patched the header files (patch attached). Copy and prepare some set of Boost header files (I used /usr/include/boost from Debian's 1.34.1-14) like this: * mkdir <boost_path>/include * cp -a /usr/include/boost <boost_path>/include * cd <boost_path>/include/boost && patch -p1 <boost.patch Finally, here's how I compiled SyncEvolution: ./configure --with-synthesis-src=<path>/libsynthesis \ CFLAGS="-g -Wall -Werror -Wno-unknown-pragmas" \ CXXFLAGS="-g -Wall -Werror -Wno-unknown-pragmas" \ LDFLAGS=-L<path>/ndk-wrappers/stlport/build/lib/obj/arm-linux-gcc/so/ \ --disable-shared --enable-static --enable-libcurl \ --disable-unit-tests --disable-integration-tests \ --disable-ecal --disable-ebook \ --with-boost=<boost_path> \ --with-xmltok=builtin \ --host=arm-linux I originally also used --disable-sqlite --disable-ical --disable-reqgex, but with the arm-linux-pkg-config link that should no longer be necessary. Copy SyncEvolution into a running emulator (started via "android" command earlier): adb push syncevolution /data/local/bin/syncevolution && \ adb shell chmod 755 /data/local/bin/syncevolution Configure SyncEvolution for contact sync with ScheduleWorld: adb shell "cd /data && /data/local/bin/syncevolution --configure --source-property type=file:text/vcard:3.0 --source-property evolutionsource=file:///data/syncevolution/addressbook --source-property sync=two-way --sync-property username=<username> --sync-property password=<password> scheduleworld addressbook" The "cd" is important because there is no HOME env variable; SyncEvolution then defaults to the current directory. Files created above and during a sync end up in /data/.config/syncevolution (config), /data/.cache (logs) and /data/syncvolution/addressbook (one vcard file per contact). Run the initial sync: adb shell "cd /data && /data/local/bin/syncevolution --run --sync-property sync=slow scheduleworld" I was using the "slow-sync" branch, therefore a slow sync is only done when expected by the user. All following runs: adb shell "cd /data && /data/local/bin/syncevolution scheduleworld" This was just an experiment. I have not tried to get the automated testing via "client-test" working, because that depends on CPPUnit and thus another set of "no exception" patches. Some of the resulting patches might be generally useful. Lukas, I suggest that you pick whatever you find useful from the libsynthesis repo. The static linking part would also be useful for Mac OS X, where --export-dynamic is not a valid option to start with. For SyncEvolution I'll probably let this settle a bit and then propose patches for merging into master. -- Best Regards, Patrick Ohly The content of this message is my personal opinion only and although I am an employee of Intel, the statements I make here in no way represent Intel's position on the issue, nor am I authorized to speak on behalf of Intel on this matter.