Automatic Contacts feature went missing (via bbdb e-plugin)

[Tobias Wolf]

If I understand correctly, the "Automatic Contacts" feature in the Mail Preferences of evolution is tied to and included with the bbdb plugin.

For some reason this plugin is not shipped anymore even though the build log shows it being compiled. Why is it not included?

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Paul Natsuo Kishimoto (khaeru)]

Also affected, with:

$ lsb_release -rd && apt-cache policy evolution
Description: Ubuntu 12.10
Release: 12.10
evolution:
  Installed: 3.6.0-0ubuntu3
  Candidate: 3.6.0-0ubuntu3
  Version table:
 *** 3.6.0-0ubuntu3 0
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ quantal/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

…this is a regression, and one that significantly impacts my productivity.

[Paul Natsuo Kishimoto (khaeru)]

Please do not change the status of bugs without giving some explanation.

[Martin Vysny (vyzivus)]

After Google changed the paradigm of mail address auto-completion by auto-completing mail addresses from all your mails, the concept of an address book became obsolete. It is a pity that Evolution still clings to this deprecated concept. The Automatic Contacts feature is at most a half-step towards Google-style auto-completion, however it's better than nothing. It is strange that this basic functionality is not embedded in the core of Evolution, but it is rather a plugin. When this plugin went missing, Evolution mail address auto-completion became useless.