Rated 3 out of 5 stars

by Newlog on Aug. 5, 2014 ·

Hello

Some time ago I posted a review entitled “VERY DANGEROUS ADDON”, and I would be very happy if the bugs I spotted there have disappeared from latest release 1.0.

However, this is not clear from the changelog, nor from the author's web site.

So, again, did you fix:
1/ the important issue of the LOCALIZED built-in Google groups?
2/ the sync of the PRO fields?
3/ the handling of BIG address books (1000+)?

I do hope so, so please confirm.

But I am in doubt when I read you claim that the addon "never deletes more than 5 entries without asking for confirmation" while some users have seen parts or all of their AB gone...

Please remember that your users, and your potential donators, are non-tech people. DO NOT ASK THEM FOR A LOG FILE OR FOR SPECIFC TESTS. You will just scare them away.

For my part I I'll be happy to donate once the addon REALLY works.

Greetings from France

This review is for a previous version of the add-on (1.0.0).  This user has a previous review of this add-on.

by Josh Geenen (Developer) on Aug. 7, 2014 ·

In the future please post comments and questions like this in the forum (preferred) or in an e-mail. This comment isn't a review, nor is it particularly helpful to me since I still don't have any details or anyone trying to decide whether to try this add-on.

1) No, because I haven't been able to recreate it and it hasn't been reported by anyone else. I use en-US, cs, de, es-ES, sv-SV, and nl localized versions of Thunderbird with unique and shared profiles without issues. Additionally, thousands of users are using the non-English localizations. If you run into it again please send me a log. If you want to see a real changelog of any open source project just find its repository and issue tracker. https://github.com/jdgeenen/gcontactsync and

2) Again, I wasn't able to recreate it. There were several bug fixes in 1.0, however, so it's possible one of those bugs affected the professional fields. If it's still broken send me a log or at least e-mail details on how to recreate the issue.

3) It can handle them, it just takes time. Try synchronizing 1000s of contacts manually...I suspect gContactSync is faster ;). Thunderbird isn't journaled so it's not easy to know what changed since the last sync (specifically what has been deleted from TB). I hope to work on an incremental sync for version 2.0 or 3.0. Remember this is a hobby, not a job, and I spend the vast majority of my spare time supporting the add-on and responding to people rather than developing it.

> But I am in doubt when I read you claim that the addon "never deletes more than 5 entries without asking for confirmation" while some users have seen parts or all of their AB gone...

It's open source, so you are free to validate my claim :) The number is configurable but it won't delete without permission. It asks once with the number of contacts it is about to delete. Unfortunately I can't control whether people actually read the dialog before clicking OK or Cancel.

> Please remember that your users, and your potential donators, are non-tech people. DO NOT ASK THEM FOR A LOG FILE OR FOR SPECIFC TESTS. You will just scare them away.

You would be surprised; many gContactSync users are highly technical and have provided me with logs and other useful information. I've heard from other developers, IT personnel, tech company owners, bloggers, etc. I agree some aren't technical, but I can usually tell whether someone is capable of sending me a log.

Also, I am definitely not in this for the money. I could make far more money in my spare time by picking up a minimum wage job. People asked for a Donate button so I added one.

Tens of thousands of people seem to think it "REALLY works", hopefully you will too. I urge you to send a log or more details on any issues you run into

Josh