Why indicator-datetime depends on evolution

[Med_Medin]

I think indicator-datetime as main mate component should never depend on an external application like evolution because :

• Evolution is not the only one used on Ubuntu and most people use e-mail or tasks on browsers.
• When someone tries to remove Evolution also indicator-datetime is removed, this is not logical dependency, and the natural is that indicator-datetime should remain showing date and time while disabling features related to evolution.
• If someday Evolution is abandoned, what will happen to indicator-datetime ? should we develop another one that depends on another evolution-like app ?
• If Evolution modify any api the change should also projected on indicator-datetime, this creates an asynchronous relationship.

I think the new indicator-datetime should remain simple component that displays only date/calendar and time and should never depend on any external library.
And what should be done is to develop an indicator specific/integrated to/with Evolution that facilitate the access to its events, tasks, mails ...

[Norbert_X]

Evolution is not the only one used on Ubuntu and most people use e-mail or tasks on browsers.

This sentence in not 100% true. For example some users (as me) want to have desktop integration with Google Calendar to have Agenda-like list of all future events. This will work without big web-browser window and will increase productivity.
In previous versions this results in pretty list of events:

So the dependency between indicator-datetime and evolution is a fix for known bug - see these threads for reference:

Issue: Integration with Evolution Calendar lost?

Is it possible to show Calendar Events in Clock applet or other native MATE applet?

Previously I have used Ubuntu 12.04 LTS with MATE from your PPA. It had indicator-datetime and shown calendar events in Clocks applet. Similar example is shown in this AskUbuntu Q&A about ordinary Ubuntu: [image] Currently I have configured Evolution to access my CalDAV. I can execute /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/indicator-datetime/indicator-datetime-service, but I have no integration with MATE clock-applet. Is it possible to get the same functionality on Ubuntu MATE 16.04 LTS?

Sync clock applet with Google calendar?

@brijabasi What is your Ubuntu MATE version? I have asked similar question in the topic here. The Clock applet itself lost this functionality (it is known issue). I got it working. I'm considering that you are running Ubuntu MATE 18.04 LTS or later. Here you need to install indicator-datetime and Evolution with sudo apt-get install indicator-datetime --no-install-recommends sudo apt-get install evolution then set up your Google account in Evolution (E-Mail, Contacts and Calendar here) and …

I'm completely happy with such implementation.

Evolution will not be abondoned as it is a essential part of GNOME with stable API.

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If you want to help you can always write your own indicator-datetime-thunderbird or so on. And share your knowledge and expertise with us

[tiox]

That's not the right way to deal with that though. Not iMO.

An Evolution compatibility layer for Thunderbird would be the better way to deal with it — This add-on would make it so Thunderbird would update information the calendar will use when the application is opened.

That also means you need to keep Thunderbird always opened, but that shouldn't be a problem for people who seriously use E-Mail on their desktop.

[Med_Medin]

This sentence in not 100% true. For example some users (as me) want to have desktop integration with Google Calendar to have Agenda-like list of all future events. This will work without big web-browser window and will increase productivity.

Most companies I worked in use Google suite for emails, tasks, calendar, events, word processing, excel...

Evolution will not be abandoned as it is a essential part of GNOME with stable API.

It's abandoned for now by users, I know no one in my environment that use Evolution or Thunderbird, everything is based on web, and those old folks inside government offices are still using Microsoft Outlook.

If you want to help you can always write your own indicator-datetime-thunderbird or so on.

I'm neither happy with Evolution nor with Thunderbird, both are useless in current time. It's not just for those apps, in every country inside private or public offices they migrated all desktop apps to web, for better maintenance and also for better/easy use by end users.

Desktop apps will remain essential only for heavy tasks, and it's not sure because the cloud will change everything in the future.

[Med_Medin]

My real problem is that removing Evolution will remove indicator-datetime which will causes Mate Tweak to lose most of its layouts panels like munity.

[lah7]

I agree that it would be nice if indicator-datetime only enabled the calendar functionality if Evolution is present, however it looks like it's one of the packages it depends on causes an Evolution package to be installed:

apt-cache show indicator-datetime

Dependencies for this package

Depends:

• libaccounts-glib0 (>= 1.0)
• libc6 (>= 2.14)
• libecal-2.0-1 (>= 3.33.4)
• libedataserver-1.2-24 (>= 3.17)
• libgcc1 (>= 1:3.0)
• libglib2.0-0 (>= 2.43.2)
• libgstreamer1.0-0 (>= 1.0.0)
• libical3 (>= 3.0.0)
• libmessaging-menu0 (>= 12.10.6-0ubuntu1phablet1)
• libnotify4 (>= 0.7.6)
• libstdc++6 (>= 5.2)
• liburl-dispatcher1 (>= 0.1)
• libuuid1 (>= 2.16)
• dconf-gsettings-backend | gsettings-backend
• gsettings-ubuntu-schemas (>= 0.0.7)
• indicator-common
• systemd

Recommends:

• indicator-applet | indicator-renderer
• evolution-data-server
• unity-control-center (>= 14.04.3) | gnome-control-center | gnome-system-tools
• ubuntu-touch-sounds

It looks like the culprit might be libedataserver-1.2-24.

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It is possible to install indicator-datetime with as little dependencies as possible by uninstalling the indicator and its dependencies, and then installing it again with --no-install-recommends.

sudo apt autoremove evolution indicator-datetime
sudo apt install indicator-datetime --no-install-recommends

This is output from a minimal 19.10 beta installation.

With recommends (33.3 MB)

Suggested packages:
  evolution
The following NEW packages will be installed
  evolution-data-server evolution-data-server-common indicator-datetime
  libaccounts-glib0 libboost-system1.67.0 libboost-thread1.67.0
  libcamel-1.2-62 libebackend-1.2-10 libebook-1.2-20 libebook-contacts-1.2-3
  libecal-2.0-1 libedata-book-1.2-26 libedata-cal-2.0-1 libedataserver-1.2-24
  libedataserverui-1.2-2 libgeocode-glib0 libgweather-3-15 libgweather-common
  libmessaging-menu0 libphonenumber7 libprotobuf17 ubuntu-touch-sounds

Need to get 16.8 MB of archives.
After this operation, 33.3 MB of additional disk space will be used.

Without recommends (4,380 kB)

Recommended packages:
  evolution-data-server ubuntu-touch-sounds
The following NEW packages will be installed
  evolution-data-server-common indicator-datetime libaccounts-glib0
  libcamel-1.2-62 libecal-2.0-1 libedataserver-1.2-24 libmessaging-menu0

Need to get 1,144 kB of archives.
After this operation, 4,830 kB of additional disk space will be used.

I'd imagine such a change would need talks with the maintainer of the packages, which will be the folks at Ubuntu.

[tiox]

I am tempted to say for people who don't like this functionality, they can shove off and use XFCE however the file manager which comes with it is nowhere nearly as robust. You could install Caja and deps for it, or an older copy of Nemo without Cinnamon deps but that would be a kind of fun that only masochists find enjoyment in.

The other alternative would be to rebuild orage for GNOME 2 / MATE, which is XFCE's date / time applet. Who's going to do that?