Following a discussion with the maintainer of GNOME Online Accounts (GOA) upon this issue, it seems that the evolution-ews package is needed in order to access mail/calendar/contacts related data by apps using GOA, when Microsoft 365 type of account is being set up.
This is how it is currently working in F41 Workstation (common scenario):
- User wants to set up a Microsoft 365 account (either connected to a Microsoft 365 subscription, or just having a regular personal account, which also provides calendar/contacts/drive components);
- User navigates to Settings → Online Accounts and chooses to set up a Microsoft 365 account;
- User successfully enters credentials, returns to Settings → Online Accounts and notices that the account was added, with mail, calendar, contacts, files toggles switched on;
- OneDrive folders/files are mounted and accessible in Files, however:
- Calendars are not accessible and GNOME Calendar and contacts are not displayed in GNOME Contacts.[1]
Unfortunately there is no message, hint that would notify the user that a component is missing and, therefore, calendar and contact information is not available.
By putting evolution-ews in the base install, this wouldn’t be an issue anymore.
Additionally, it might be considered appropriate to decouple and not require evolution package as a dependency, supposing not really needed by the different apps using GOA[2].
Mail is a separate topic, since there is no official GNOME mail (core) app. Geary is the closest, but apparently doesn’t provide Exchange support. User can, however, set up standard Microsoft account from GOA for IMAP/SMTP support though. ↩︎
Except for Evolution as an app, obviously, but that’s the user’s choice to install it. ↩︎