libical-4.0.0

[Bruce Dubbs]

New point version.

[martyj19]

"This is a major release and is not source or binary compatible with version 3.x." There is a porting guide. I would expect some dependent package breaks.

[martyj19]

Some options have changed name and SHARED_ONLY is no longer supported

      -D LIBICAL_BUILD_DOCS=false      \
      -D LIBICAL_GOBJECT_INTROSPECTION=true \
      -D LIBICAL_GLIB_VAPI=true        \

[martyj19]

Adjustment to bluez 5.86

[martyj19]

The only dependent package I have is bluez. There is one new library libicalvcard.so. The attached patch plus an autoreconf -fvi will allow obexd to link successfully.

[Xi Ruoyao]

Replying to martyj19:

Some options have changed name and SHARED_ONLY is no longer supported

It's -D LIBICAL_STATIC=NO instead now.

[Xi Ruoyao]

And -D LIBICAL_JAVA_BINDINGS=OFF is needed to avoid a dependency on JDK.

[Xi Ruoyao]

It looks like for bluez it's easier to pass ICAL_LIBS='-lical -licalvcal' to make. Note that libicalvcard is not needed.

[Xi Ruoyao]

gnome-shell: ​https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-shell/-/merge_requests/4215

[Bruce Dubbs]

## [4.0.0] - 2026-04-30

This is a major release and is not source or binary compatible with version 3.x.

Please see [Version 4 Migration Guide](MigrationGuide_to_4.md) for details about API changes since libical 3.x.

Included in this release is a Technical Preview (TP) of our new library libicalvcard for handling VCARD formatted data. We encourage users to try-out this new library and provide feedback to our issue tracker at <​https://github.com/libical/libical/issues>. Note that the libicalvcard API is not finalized and no source or binary compatibility is guaranteed until sometime later in 4.x release cycle. Additionally, there are currently no C++ bindings available for libicalvcard (volunteers wanted).

Please do not use libicalvcard for production or other non-experimental purposes until the Technical Preview phase is completed.

### Added

• REUSE compliant licensing
• Supports multi-valued parameters (DELEGATED-FROM, DELEGATED-TO, MEMBER, DISPLAY, FEATURE, etc)
• Adds java bindings
• (TP) Brand new icalvcard library that follows the libical API.
• draft-ietf-calext-eventpub-extensions-19 (RFC 9073) support added
• draft-ietf-calext-valarm-extensions-07 (RFC 9074) support added
• Added support for Event Publishing (RFC 9073) and VALARM (RFC 9074) Extensions
• New CMake option "LIBICAL_ENABLE_64BIT_ICALTIME_T" to use 64-bit time_t implementations on 32-bit systems (where available and supported. Windows-only so far)
• GEO property has arbitrary precision (values are internally stored as strings, not doubles)
• Allow previous recurrence iteration
• icalparser_ctrl setting defines how to handle invalid CONTROL characters during parsing
• Full support for BYSETPOS, i.e. remove the limitation to MONTHLY and YEARLY frequencies
• An API for setting/getting internal library limits (icallimit_set and icallimit_get)

### Changed

• Built-in timezones updated to tzdata2026a to include historical data
• Requires MSVC 2013 or higher (when building on Windows with MSVC)
• Requires CMake v3.20.0 or higher
• For the C++ bindings, requires a C++11 compliant C++ compiler
• libical-glib requires glib 2.38 or higher
• libical-glib requires a C11 compliant C compiler
• Replace gtk-doc with gi-docgen to produce libical-glib developer documentation
• libical-glib API is considered stable; no longer need to define LIBICAL_GLIB_UNSTABLE_API=1 before including <libical-glib/libical-glib.h>
• By default, only shared libraries are built; to get static libraries one must invoke separate build using the CMake -DLIBICAL_STATIC=True option.
• CMake option -DGOBJECT_INTROSPECTION=True by default.
• icaltzutil_get_zone_directory() can use the TZDIR environment to find system zoneinfo
• icaltimezone_set_tzid_prefix() now allows setting an empty tzid prefix.
• icaldurationtype_from_int and icaldurationtype_as_int have been renamed to icaldurationtype_from_seconds and icaldurationtype_as_seconds, respectively.
• Components and properties with arbitrary iana-token names now are parsed with kind ICAL_IANA_COMPONENT and ICAL_IANA_PROPERTY if the ical_unknown_token_handling setting is ICAL_ASSUME_IANA_TOKEN. Otherwise, they are handled as error.
• Property and parameter names that start with "x-" (lowercase) now also are parsed as X kind.
• The icalproperty_remove_parameter_by_(kind|name) functions now remove all matching parameters. Before, they only removed the first matching parameter contrary to their documentation.
• icalrecurrencetype_new_from_string() is more strict against overflows and empty rule parts. E.g. it now rejects RRULE parts like BYDAY=255SU (which used to be interpreted as BYDAY=-1SU).

### Deprecated

• Several CMake options are renamed in favor of a "namespaced" equivalent. Please port your buildscripts to the new CMake option names. A complete list is provided in this "CMake options" section of the [Version 4 Migration Guide](MigrationGuide_to_4.md)

### Removed

• The old src/python code is removed in favor of the glib-introspection generated Python bindings. Requires building with -DGOBJECT_INTROSPECTION=True

### Fixed

• Fixed icalcomponent_get_duration() to account for DTEND/DUE TZID
• Improved performance of recurrence iterators
• Improved handling of BYWEEKNO when BYDAY is not present
• Fixed icalcomponent_get_dtend() and icalcomponent_foreach_recurrence() to correctly handle nominal durations
• Fixed icalcomponent_foreach_recurrence to filter out duplicate instances

[Bruce Dubbs]

I got a build error with -D LIBICAL_STATIC=NO at -j4, but it was OK at -j1.

Note that BLFS has 4 references to libical:

general/sysutils/bluez.xml:               <xref linkend="libical"/>
xsoft/other/balsa.xml:                    <xref linkend="libical"/>,
kde/kf6/kf6-frameworks.xml:               <xref linkend="libical"/>,
gnome/platform/evolution-data-server.xml: <xref linkend="libical"/>,

Also note that there do not seem to be any tests:

$ make test
Running tests...
Test project /build/libical/libical-4.0.0/build
No tests were found!!!

But it looks like we need to change some defults for them:

LIBICAL_BUILD_TESTING:BOOL=OFF
LIBICAL_BUILD_TESTING_BIGFUZZ:BOOL=OFF

We might want to change the default LIBICAL_ENABLE_64BIT_ICALTIME_T:BOOL=OFF

Specific directories installed:

/usr/lib/cmake/LibIcal
/usr/libexec/libical
/usr/include/libical
/usr/include/libical-glib

Libraries:

/usr/lib/libical.so        
/usr/lib/libicalss.so      
/usr/lib/libicalss_cxx.so  
/usr/lib/libicalvcal.so    
/usr/lib/libicalvcard.so   new
/usr/lib/libical-glib.so   
/usr/lib/libical_cxx.so

[Bruce Dubbs]

Fixed at commit 92cc3bd271.