[CalendarServer-users] OS X Server vs Darwin Calendar Server and my first DCS installation

[Scott Haneda]

Can someone list the pros and cons of using DCS versus using the built  
in calender server on OS X Server on Snow Leopard?

Or are they the same source perhaps?

I am looking for basic family based calendar serving and sharing,  
simple stuff.

I did get trunk working last night. Quite easy really.  The details  
you enter into iCal were a bit tricky to discover, but once past that,  
it did seem to work.

My limitations were not knowing where to deal with adding users and  
setting their permissions, but I also did not dig into it in any  
significant way.

One thing I noticed, is I synced the default admin account with a  
local mac and an iPhone as my test case.

Changes and additions to the local mac, importing of pre-existing  
calendars etc, all worked flawlessly and fast.

Making a change on iPhone and syncing, with a forced refresh in iCal  
on the desktop, propogated on refresh.

iPhone on the other hand did not. I am not seeing any way in calendar  
on iPhone to force a refresh. Eventually the changes make their way,  
what defines this?

Does DCS support push notifications out to iPhones?

I added attendees which made it to all clients eventually, however,  
iPhone also did not recognize them as existing users in my address  
book, though they were there. Names showed as "uid:user" or something  
to that effect. (that literal string)

Attached files were not anywhere obvious in iPhone either. All other  
fields seemed to have parity.

This was with a trunk snapshot from last night. Are my issues 3.x  
related, or am I missing something obvious?

On DCS, when an alert is set to notify via email, does this rely on  
the local MTA on the DCS machine, or is there an in built mailer I  
will need to SMTP authenticate with, or is the client responsible for  
the mail notifications?

For alerts, on remote clients such as iPhone, anything special I need  
to set up, or is making sure a reasonable refresh rate is defined in  
iCal sufficient?

I've tried a lot of ways to do this, the gmail middleman dance, looked  
at busycal, some php messes, and a few more.

My first try a few weeks ago was DCS, but I never could get iCal to  
talk to it. Which was just needing the URL to have the URI bits  
attached. Maybe the wiki could use some edits there? Can I make such  
edits, or is that private?

If the answer is that OS X Server is the same, I may go that way for  
integration simplicity. If not, I'd like to start work on a MacPorts  
Portfile for DCS.

Has any effort into a MacPorts Portfile been made in the past, seems I  
must be missing it, being in the same "forge" and all :)

MacPorts likes to sandbox to it's own prefix very strongly, perhaps  
that, meaning a full blown new python install and source modification  
to all paths has something to do with the port never being made.  I am  
betting every -s bit is going to need touching by MacPorts as well.

Any past history with regard to MacPorts and DCS would be appreciated.

Thanks all.
-- 
Scott
Iphone says hello.