Best Repositories for GnuCash in Ubuntu ?

[Tommy Trussell]

On Sun, Feb 15, 2009 at 9:08 AM, Rolf Leggewie
<no2spam at nospam.arcornews.de> wrote:
> thank you for your mail which I guess would have been more appropriate
> on the -user list (which I don't follow ;-))

I appreciate you taking the time to respond... I started to cross-post
to the User list and then decided my underlying concern was not
completely a user-oriented one.

> The Ubuntu Packaging Team formed at the time when HBCI, which is rather
> important for German online banking, was deactivated in Debian due to
> licensing issues.  I guess one of the aims was to make the transition to
> dfsg-free code smoother and better tested by putting out non-official
> packages.  If there was another important feature in upstream gnucash
> stable not yet packaged in Debian or Ubuntu, you might again see
> unofficial packages, but don't hold your breath.

I see... with that in mind I believe I understand why the GnuCash wiki
was edited to promote the PPA. For awhile the PPA contained a more
current release of GnuCash so someone promoted it ahead of the
standard repository. At the moment, however, if you are running
Intrepid 8.10 both contain GnuCash 2.2.6. SO unless you need HBCI you
might as well stick with Ubuntu's. For those of us who have some
machines running Hardy 8.0.4 the PPA might still be preferable. When I
get a chance that's what I will edit the wiki to reflect that.

> What exactly is it in 2.2.8 that you need and that is not in 2.2.6?
> Just the rush of running the latest?  Try Gentoo, then ;-)  Otherwise, I
> think the best advice I can give is to just be satisfied with the stable
> release that ubuntu provides you with and let other people do the testing.

I appreciate your teasing out that particular point because I think it
makes the point clearly that I'd probably do best sticking with 2.2.6
for my daily work.

However when I encounter a bug I first wonder whether it has already
been noticed and fixed, so before I go to the trouble to file a bug
report I want to try it in the most recent version. Since I'm
technical enough and my system has plenty of unused clock cycles, I
could just compile a test version from svn. (Maybe someday I'll even
submit a patch rather than just filing a bug and hoping someone ELSE
will have the time....)

> I'm not sure if Saïvann does packaging.  But I'm rather sure that
> neither Reinhard nor me intend to bypass the debian queue on a permanent
> basis just so as to supply ubuntu users with more recent packages.  If
> the need arises I will be happy to provide backports of gnucash for
> ubuntu users of stable releases (anything non-Jaunty currently) in my
> private or the group's PPA.  Feel free to alert me of such a need but be
> prepared to give me a good reason why you think a backport is necessary.
>  I usually will not backport anything newer than what is available in
> the latest ubuntu release.  Please don't be offended if I don't think a
> backport is necessary (or too difficult, or me too busy, ...)
>
> Hope this answers your questions.

I deeply appreciate the time you have taken to cover this. This will
help me greatly next time I get a chance to update the wiki.

I had also wondered about getting GnuCash promoted to the Main
repository in Ubuntu. But now I understand your existing team does not
intend to be involved on that level.