KDE for Enterprise Needs a Strong PIM Infrastructure
KDE for Enterprise Needs a Strong PIM Infrastructure
KDE 企业版需要强大的 PIM 基础设施
This post has been long overdue, but let’s say I’ve been busy and the reason will be obvious in this short piece. ☺ As you might have heard a couple of months ago, the Sovereign Tech Fund did a large investment in KDE software development. From the announcement the details can be a bit sparse on what it actually entails. Especially regarding the part which says “the frameworks underlying its communication services”. It turns out this is what enioka Haute Couture is contracted by KDE e.V. to work on. Let me bring a bit more details about it.
这篇文章拖了很久才写，不过可以说我一直很忙，原因在这篇短文中显而易见。☺ 正如你几个月前可能听到的那样，主权技术基金（Sovereign Tech Fund）对 KDE 软件开发进行了大规模投资。从公告来看，关于其具体内容的细节可能有些模糊，尤其是关于“其通信服务底层框架”的部分。事实证明，这正是 enioka Haute Couture 受 KDE e.V. 委托所要从事的工作。让我来详细介绍一下。
What? Why?
是什么？为什么？
The overarching theme of the investment is to make the KDE ecosystem more desirable for enterprise and public institution uses. The desktop shell (Plasma) and having a strong base to distribute it (KDE Linux) obviously comes to mind, but it’s also about the Personal Information Management (PIM) space. Nowadays a good chunk of the institutional life (public or otherwise) is to deal with email, contacts and calendars. So we set sail to strengthen Kontact, KMail, Korganizer and friends. More specifically, we want to strengthen its underlying infrastructure: Akonadi and its resources. So what exactly are we working on currently? Well, I propose you attend the Akademy 2026 talk of my colleagues which will cover what we do on KDE PIM!
此次投资的总体主题是使 KDE 生态系统更适合企业和公共机构使用。人们首先想到的显然是桌面外壳（Plasma）以及分发它的强大基础（KDE Linux），但它也涉及个人信息管理（PIM）领域。如今，机构生活（无论是公共还是其他机构）很大一部分是处理电子邮件、联系人和日历。因此，我们着手加强 Kontact、KMail、Korganizer 等组件。更具体地说，我们希望加强其底层基础设施：Akonadi 及其资源。那么我们目前到底在做什么呢？我建议你参加我同事在 Akademy 2026 上的演讲，届时将涵盖我们在 KDE PIM 方面的工作！
The Work
工作内容
OK, OK, you’re still here? So read on for a few more details even though I obviously don’t want to steal their thunder. There are three axis we’re focusing on: Quality, Protocol support and modernisation, and Ease of use and deployment.
好吧，好吧，你还在看？那就继续阅读了解更多细节吧，尽管我显然不想抢他们的风头。我们关注的重点有三个方向：质量、协议支持与现代化，以及易用性与部署。
Quality
质量
Those who know me also know what it means: more tests!!! To be fair on the Akonadi server and resources side, we’re not too bad in terms of unit tests. The underlying protocol libraries as well have some unit test. The DAV side is maybe a bit weak and we hope to fix that, but on the IMAP side things aren’t too shabby. That being said, we didn’t really have a test suite which would cover all the components integrated together. Those are more expensive and less fun to develop, so we’d be working on that by adopting a proof of concept done by Dan Vratil a while ago. It changed quite a lot but is becoming stronger with a comprehensive test suite covering IMAP and DAV. Unsurprisingly it uncovered quite a few bugs we didn’t know about before starting the work, and gave us a nice environment to reproduce long known bugs that we had a hard time to chase down previously. Of course, we’re working through the list of failing tests to fix everything we can. Some of my long hated bugs are already gone! Well, I use the master branch… so I live in the future from you dear readers, and the future is definitely better here.
认识我的人都知道这意味着什么：更多的测试！！！公平地说，在 Akonadi 服务器和资源方面，我们的单元测试做得还不错。底层的协议库也有一些单元测试。DAV 方面可能稍弱，我们希望能修复它，但在 IMAP 方面情况还算不错。话虽如此，我们确实没有一个能够覆盖所有组件集成在一起的测试套件。这些测试开发起来成本更高，也更枯燥，所以我们通过采用 Dan Vratil 前段时间完成的概念验证来着手处理。它改变了很多，但随着涵盖 IMAP 和 DAV 的综合测试套件的加入，它正变得越来越强大。不出所料，它发现了不少我们在开始工作前不知道的错误，并为我们提供了一个很好的环境来重现那些以前很难追踪的长期存在的错误。当然，我们正在逐一处理失败的测试列表，以修复我们能修复的一切。我长期痛恨的一些错误已经消失了！好吧，我使用的是 master 分支……所以我生活在亲爱的读者们的未来，而未来显然更美好。
Protocol Support and Modernisation
协议支持与现代化
Our PIM suite supports many protocols… but in the case of enterprise use in a sovereign context (so having some control on the server side, and using open protocols), IMAP4, CalDAV, and iTIP (for invitations) are kings. So we’re focusing on modernising our support for them. In particular we’re aiming at better support of IMAP4rev2 enabled servers, but also QRESYNC. This should bring a better use of network resources and faster resync. On the DAV side, we’re looking at supporting push notifications. This is currently not completely standardised but we’ll be ready as soon as it is. Everything will be in place to track the specification as it matures. Thanks to this work, we’ll also improve the syncing code of the DAV resource, again using less network bandwidth. Obviously iTIP support benefits from both. It also highlights issues on the DAV support which we’re fixing as we find them.
我们的 PIM 套件支持许多协议……但在主权背景下的企业使用场景中（即在服务器端拥有一定控制权并使用开放协议），IMAP4、CalDAV 和 iTIP（用于邀请）是核心。因此，我们专注于对其支持进行现代化改造。特别是，我们旨在更好地支持启用 IMAP4rev2 的服务器，以及 QRESYNC。这将带来更好的网络资源利用率和更快的重新同步速度。在 DAV 方面，我们正在寻求支持推送通知。目前这还没有完全标准化，但一旦标准化，我们就会准备好。一切都将就绪，以跟踪规范的成熟。得益于这项工作，我们还将改进 DAV 资源的同步代码，从而再次减少网络带宽的使用。显然，iTIP 支持也从中受益。它还突显了 DAV 支持方面的问题，我们会在发现时进行修复。
Ease of Use and Deployment
易用性与部署
The architecture of Akonadi means that a user setup of the solution has quite a few components to configure. This is not necessarily a problem in itself, but we could make things easier and at times it’s mostly about configuring each protocol manually and separately. Of course, there’s a specification proposed to support autoconfiguration based on just an email and a password. We got some partial support for it in KMail, but we’ll work on completing this and bringing it closer to System Settings. Couple that to some device management facilities in say… KDE Linux and that starts to look like a strong proposal for enterprise. Finally, we’ll look into the Flatpak version of our PIM suite and see how to make it easier to integrate in the desktop. The possibilities are fairly limited for now and we’d like to make it first class going forward.
Akonadi 的架构意味着用户设置该解决方案时需要配置相当多的组件。这本身不一定是个问题，但我们可以让事情变得更简单，有时这主要涉及手动且单独地配置每个协议。当然，已经有一个提议的规范，支持仅基于电子邮件和密码进行自动配置。我们在 KMail 中获得了一些部分支持，但我们将致力于完成此功能，并使其更接近系统设置。再加上 KDE Linux 中的一些设备管理设施，这看起来就像是一个强大的企业级方案。最后，我们将研究 PIM 套件的 Flatpak 版本，看看如何使其更容易集成到桌面中。目前可能性相当有限，我们希望在未来使其成为一流的体验。
What to Expect
展望未来
Obviously for the time being we can expect more activity in KDE PIM which is good. We have quite a few patches in the PIM repositories at this point and some of the improvement will be released really soon as part of 26.08! Some more will come in the next release (26.12) of course but it still required too much QA and missed the freeze. No matter, it’s not a long wait. Also, we hope that it’ll be easier to deploy and setup when we get to tackle the Flatpak related tasks. Really looking forward to this! We hope to deliver this by the end of the year or early 2027. Which would mark the end of the project for us. Later on, I hope this infrastructure work will attract more users and contributors again. Indeed, there’s still interesting work needed on the application side of things, but if the protocol support and quality of the base system is stronger, it makes it easier to try new things with the applications, less pieces to fight with will make the whole endeavour more desirable.
显然，目前我们可以期待 KDE PIM 有更多的活动，这是件好事。目前我们在 PIM 仓库中有很多补丁，其中一些改进将很快作为 26.08 版本的一部分发布！当然，更多改进将在下一个版本（26.12）中出现，但它仍然需要太多的质量保证（QA）而错过了冻结期。没关系，等待时间不会太长。此外，我们希望当我们处理完 Flatpak 相关任务时，部署和设置会变得更容易。非常期待！我们希望在今年年底或 2027 年初交付这些成果。这将标志着我们项目的结束。以后，我希望这些基础设施工作能再次吸引更多的用户和贡献者。确实，在应用程序方面还有很多有趣的工作要做，但如果协议支持和基础系统的质量更强，那么在应用程序上尝试新事物就会更容易，需要处理的麻烦更少，会使整个事业更具吸引力。