[sf-lug] sharing calendars without Google?

[Akkana Peck]

I've been trying to find a way to share a calendar between my Linux
machine and my Android phone -- without involving Google or Apple.

Ideally, I'd like something that uses human-readable text files, not
something that can only be accessed through a Gnome, KDE or Java app.

I used to use aCalendar+ on my Android phone. But since COVID, I've
needed to keep my calendar on my computer, since most meetings
include a Zoom link. So I've been keeping my schedule in a text file
(I've used both remind and emacs org-mode formats). But I miss being
able to whip out my phone when I'm away from home and somebody asks
me "Are you free Thursday?"

I looked into ical (.ics) format, but when I create an ics and load
it into Android aCalendar+ more than once, I get repeated events,
even if I add unique UIDs for each event. So that won't work for
regular syncing.

There are apparently Android apps to import from CalDAV, which might
be smarter about avoiding duplicate events. So on Linux I've been
fiddling around with radicale (a lightweight CalDAV server) and
vdirsyncer (which is supposed to be able to export ics files to
CalDAV), but I can't figure out how to get them to talk to each
other. The documentation is very skimpy. There's another caldav
server that vdirsyncer recommends called Xandikos, but it has even
less documentation.

I suppose I could just sync the Linux text file to my web server,
and if I need to check from the phone, I can surf to the .txt file
in an Android browser (or run remind in a CGI). But I thought I'd
post and see if anyone knows of a better way.

        ...Akkana