Integration with other applications?

[Bill Gribble]

On Thu, Aug 10, 2000 at 09:11:49AM -0500, Drew Bernat wrote:
> Gnucash, by it's design, is/should be (I'm not sure which) scriptable. I
> see that in the same light as command-line flags -- starting a program to
> do certain things without user input. 

I agree with you completely on this.  It's my opinion (and that of
several other developers) that all or nearly all of the functionality
of gnucash should be available without a single window ever coming up.
We are well on our way to being there, but not 100% yet.

Rob Browning is working on a command-line interface exactly like you
describe right now; gnucash has used Guile as its scripting language
for a long time, but until now there wasn't an easy way to run
arbitrary functions "within" gnucash without bringing up the full GUI
application.

>From a completely different perspective, a command-line-driven gnucash
is MUCH easier to perform automated regression testing on.  We can put
together a test suite that can run via "make test" that runs a new
build of gnucash through its paces and compares known results with new
results; say, you open a new file, create some accounts, run a million
program-generated transactions through it, save the file, and compare
with a "known correct" saved file.  Or batch-import a mess of Quicken
files and compare the saved .gnc files with known results.  Etc.

b.g.