Recommended way of installing radicale in the most recent version on ubuntu server

[dingodoppelt]

Hi there,
I'm loving radicale so far but I'm using the distribution provided packages from ubuntu 24.04 (version 3.1.8) and I'd like to upgrade i.e. run the most recent version.
What would be the recommended way of installing/upgrading radicale when I already have a working configuration on version 3.1.8?
Should I use pip and install radicale into a venv accessible to the radicale user or is pipx recommended, to install radicale system-wide as root, as would be the case with the distribution provided package?
cheers, nils

[pbiering]

There are hints for Debian/Ubuntu based on a Wiki page (see below) unfortunatly not for system-wide usage via PIP.

I have no details why for LTS versions of Debian and Ubuntu they are not upgrading the packages and would therefore contact the maintainers or switch to Enterprise Linux (for major version 8 up to to 10 latest Radicale version is available).

Technically

• file storage has no changes
• config file can require some small adjustments
• minimum Python version can be a challenge as 3.9 is mandatory

So far nobody from the Debian/Ubuntu user group took the challenge...if one feels assigned, then please extend the Wiki pages

• https://github.com/Kozea/Radicale/wiki (related to Python versions on Ubuntu LTS)
• https://github.com/Kozea/Radicale/wiki/Installing-on-Debian-or-Ubuntu-Linux

[dingodoppelt]

I reached out to one of the Debian maintainers and he said he couldn't do anything about it.
In another discussion basically the same question was asked and answered in #1686
As I had already installed the distribution provided package, the radicale user existed and almost all directories were already in the right places.

Upgrading from the distribution provided packages on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (radicale version 3.1.8) to master

# this assumes that radicale has already been installed via "apt install radicale"
# install python-venv
apt install python3.12-venv

# create installation and cache folders and set permissions for radicale user
python3 -m venv /venv/radicale
chown -R radicale:radicale /venv/radicale/
mkdir /var/cache/radicale/
chown -R radicale:radicale /var/cache/radicale/

# change into radicale folder and install with the local venv installation of pip
cd /venv/radicale/
bin/pip install https://github.com/Kozea/Radicale/archive/master.tar.gz

My config uses dovecot authentication, which I had to migrate from the old auth plugin, nothing else.
I then did a $systemctl edit radicale to create an override and pasted in the necessary changes:

# paste this into the editor that opens after "systemctl edit radicale"
# /etc/systemd/system/radicale.service.d/override.conf
[Service]
ReadWritePaths=/var/cache/radicale/
# to override ExecStart you first need to unset it because override is rather append in systemd
ExecStart=
ExecStart=/venv/radicale/bin/python -m radicale

Hope this helps, nils

EDIT: I also run a git storage hook to track my changes and since running radicale in a venv I had to give the full absolute path to my git executable for the hook to still function.
in /etc/radicale/config in section [storage] -> hook pass the full path to git:

# When installed in a venv, make sure to pass the absolute git path
hook = /usr/bin/git add -A && (/usr/bin/git diff --cached --quiet || /usr/bin/git commit -m "Changes by \"%(user)s\"")

[pbiering]

@dingodoppelt - can you please extend the Wiki page https://github.com/Kozea/Radicale/wiki/Installing-on-Debian-or-Ubuntu-Linux

I reached out to one of the Debian maintainers and he said he couldn't do anything about it.

Strange, looks like for running Radicale native on an OS, Debian/Ubuntu cannot be recommended at all for having up-to-date packaged versions available.