backups and log files

[Ben Stanley]

package: file loading/saving
version: cvs 26th March

I recently lost about 1 1/2 hrs work while using cvs gnucash - I forgot
to hit the save button for a while. duh. I suppose you get that kind of
thing using cvs version...

Anyway, it seems that nothing has happened with the backups and log
files situation. There was a large amount of discussion on this topic on
the mailing list some time ago, but it seems that nothing has been done.

What were the results of the discussion?
Was a remedy agreed upon?

My opinion is that at the very least we should be writing out a
transaction LOG which can be READ BACK IN. This would alleviate most of
the pain associated with a crash, and it should cope with power failures
too - which is something that even a stable gnucash *must* be able to
do.

Is it possible to write the transaction log in xml?

The restoration operation would involve loading the previously available
backup file or previously saved file, and then reading in the log file
(presumably more recent than the previously saved file) and apply all
the transactions recorded therein. Instant automated crash recovery...
as long as the log file doesn't get corrupted by the power failure. I
suppose you should construct each transaction log in memory and then
flush it to disk as a complete unit, rather than writing it's components
piecewise to the disk, which could result in a corrupt file if something
nasty struck in the middle of the writing.

RFC?

I may be able to do some work on this when I'm finished with FreqSpec
for jsled, but I also want to work on budgeting...

Ben.