Redundant ubuntu-online-accounts and gnome-online-accounts panels using a session other than Unity

[Dylan McCall]

To reproduce this, close gnome-control-center and run the following command:
env XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP=GNOME gnome-control-center

Note that there are two Online Accounts panels: one for ubuntu-online-accounts and one for gnome-online-accounts. This is very unpleasant. These two panels claim to do the same thing, but ultimately they have nothing to do with each other.

To make matters worse, the gnome-online-accounts panel doesn't appear to do much of anything by default (except probably with Evolution) since Empathy has been built to use ubuntu-online-accounts — to the extent that Empathy will open that configuration panel when the user chooses Accounts from its menu.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for your bug report, that's probably something we should look at solving for quantal, the easiest solution would probably to drop support for gnome-online-account in GNOME sessions as well, they basically do the same thing and the GNOME version is limited and integrates to less applications

[Jeremy Bicha (jbicha)]

Currently, ubuntu-online-accounts doesn't work with Evolution or gnome-documents (Documents supports Google & Windows now). I think Contacts doesn't work with ubuntu-online-accounts either and Contacts is included with Ubuntu 12.10. Kerberos, a brand new feature in g-o-a 3.5.90 isn't supported.

Perhaps it's bad design but neither Contacts nor Documents link to GNOME Documents directly so completely hiding it will cause problems.

[Michael Flaig (mflaig)]

Sabastien,

actually I don't see the ubuntu version of online-accounts to be superior.

Gnome-online-accounts supports
- disabling features I don't want (i.e. choose to not have certain features - google chat, or mail or documents or whatever)
- Exchange Support through evolution-ews
- Gnome Documents Support
- Enterprise Login
- Well designed user interface

How should this be handled? Feature request for Ubuntu's online-accounts?
I wouldn't like those features to just disappear

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

> actually I don't see the ubuntu version of online-accounts to be superior.

well, it has more providers and more granularity and controls for apps and more flexibility to enhence it (doing custom plugins) but let's not argue over that...

> - disabling features I don't want (i.e. choose to not have certain features - google chat, or mail or documents or whatever)

you can actually do that with the Ubuntu version with better granularity, you can allow shotwell to access facebook but not the unity dash for example where in the GNOME version if you enable a provider you enable it for the whole desktop

> - Exchange Support through evolution-ews

right, evolution doesn't have ubuntu-online-account support yet, that will likely come next cycle

> - Gnome Documents Support

same

> - Enterprise Login

none of the new stack with realmd, new control center, etc landed in Ubuntu yet, that's not really specific to online accounts

> - Well designed user interface

in fact the Ubuntu Online Account UI was reviewed with the GNOME designers at GUADEC and their feedback was rather positive on it, the design of both might get closer, I guess you will have to start your fork if you don't like that...

> How should this be handled? Feature request for Ubuntu's online-accounts?
> I wouldn't like those features to just disappear

Opening feature request bugs is of course welcome, most of the items on that list are probably things that make sense to support

[Greg Grossmeier (greg.grossmeier)]

I just reported the feature request bugs, confirmation/triaging appreciated, Seb.

Evolution/Exchange:
bug 1062447

GNOME Documents:
bug 1062449

[brian baker (brian-m-baker)]

it also doesn't allow gnome-contacts to function either!
when you try to add an online account it takes you to online accounts window and allows you to set up an account i.e. google
after going through the various steps of authentication it just stops! it should take you back into gnome-contacts but it doesn't.
when you run gnome-contacts through a terminal it shows no errors either!

i also filed this bug https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=679733
cheers

[Davide Capodaglio (davidecapod)]

@Sebastian: how can I disable individual services with ubuntu-online-accounts?
For example, I set up a Google account, but I want to use it with Docs and the Dash ONLY, and not with Empathy...
I am on 12.10 amd64

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

@Davide: that feature is not implemented yet, that's a different topic from the one described in that bug though