After successfully compiling and installing the BlueZync for Thunderbird plugin last night, I decided to take a shot at actually synchronizing my Blackberry with Thunderbird. The first step was a little bit of configuration. For that, I followed this guide on the BlueZync website.
Everything was going fine until I got to the section entitled “Mozilla plugin for OpenSync.” In this section, you are instructed to execute the command ldconfig -p | grep libxpcom.so, which checks if the file libxpcom.so is registered as a symlink on your system. After finding out that it was not, I entered the command locate libxpcom.so from a root terminal, and found three locations for the file in question on my system. I then used the line export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/lib/icedove:/usr/lib/iceowl:/usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9 to register the symlink. Unfortunately, even after running the export command, ldconfig failed to find the link. Although this one will probably bite me in the ass later on, I’ll skip it for now.
At this point in the install process, I could access the BlueZync settings panel from within Thunderbird, and run the command line osynctool –listplugins and see the mozilla-sync plugin listed, which is the part of the BlueZync suite that really interests me. mozilla-sync is a plugin for OpenSync that should allow me to interface my Blackberry with Thunderbird (with the help of the Barry libraries, which provide another OpenSync plugin that communicates with the phone).
To continue, it was necessary to install all of the elements of the Barry libraries in order to get their OpenSync plugin that would complete the chain. This is where I may have committed my second cardinal sin – dpkg notified me that in order to install the opensync-plugin-barry package, I had to install a version of the libopensync0 package that was between v0.22 and v0.3. As I understand it, Bluezync already installed some version of OpenSync onto my machine, and I have a feeling that reinstalling a different version may ruin all of the progress that I’ve made thus far.
Indeed, after finishing the Barry install and running osynctool –listplugins again, mozilla-sync was still listed, but opensync-plugin-barry was not. This is strange, as in my last three attempts at this process, getting Barry to show up was the easy part. Now the tables have turned, and I have what I assume to be a properly working BlueZync install, but without the Barry component that would make it all work with my phone.
Back to the proverbial drawing board with me…
Oh yes, version management can be a real pain.
OpenSync has a stable version 0.22, which is used on many distros, and which the Barry project plugin is apparently targeting.
OpenSync development is ongoing on unstable versions 0.3x, targeting a stable version 0.40.
Unfortunately, plugins are not compatible between 0.22 and 0.39.
And blueZync is only for 0.39.
I see too possible ways out here:
(1) Get a barry plugin for OpenSync 0.39.
I see that they have a branch for that at http://barry.cvs.sourceforge.net/viewvc/barry/barry/opensync-plugin-0.4x/
However, it has not been worked on for more than half a year, so it will probably not work “out-of-the-box”.
But you may give it a try, and ask the nice people over at the barry project for help…
(2) If barry supports SyncML, you may be able to use the syncml-plugin which DOES work with OpenSync 0.39, and which you already have installed alongside blueZync.
/Henrik