Re[2]: Plugins, modules oe similar functionality

Michele Ravani Michele.Ravani@swissonline.ch
Sun, 9 Jun 2002 22:36:11 +0200 (CEST)


On Sun, 9 Jun 2002 20:21:06 +0200 Christian Stimming <stimming@tuhh.de> wrote:

CS> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
CS> 
CS> On Sonntag, 9. Juni 2002 15:51, Michele Ravani wrote:
CS> > Hi
CS> >
CS> > I've tried to find information (docs, website, ...) about how to
CS> bind new
CS> > scm modules into gnucash and have the functionality they implement to
CS> > appear in the application (hope it is clear what I mean).
CS> 
CS> This is great to hear. You might consider subscribing to gnucash-devel
CS> (I CC'd 
CS> this answer to there), since on that list we are always very happy if
CS> we can 
CS> help new developers to get a hand on the gnucash code. 

I don't want to get your hopes too high. I do have little time even if the
wish to get back into developing is strong (damn the day I moved into
management ;o))

CS> Gnucash in 1.6 is built as one big binary executable plus a bunch of
CS> scheme 
CS> files that are loaded at startup. The current development tree (1.7
CS> and soon 
CS> to be 1.8), however, consists of a bunch of scheme/guile files which 
CS> dynamically load the executable code as shared libraries. 

I've got the (hopefully) newest from the CVS, although I didn't get around
to build it yet.
 
CS> If you want to add new modules, the doc for that is in 
CS> src/gnc-modules/doc/design.txt, 
CS> http://www.gnucash.org/lxr/gnucash/source/src/gnc-module/doc/design.txt
CS>  . I 
CS> don't quite know how it would be handeled if you *only* want to add
CS> scheme 
CS> code and no binary code, but others here will probably give you a more 
CS> exhaustive answer to that.

Thanks for the pointer. 
I was thinking that may be there could be a way to plug scm code into gnucash
without having to rebuild the system, e.g. modules which are detected and
loaded at runtime.

CS> For asking questions like that, you can also log in to IRC on
CS> irc.gnome.org at 
CS> #gnucash. Most of the time there are people hanging around and are
CS> especially 
CS> happy if we can help you to start coding :-)

Thanks.

CS> might consider participating in our ongoing discussion on
CS> gnucash-devel, 
CS> http://gnucash.org/pipermail/gnucash-devel/2002-June/006293.html and
CS> thread, 
CS> so probably you can re-use some of the code (and contribute to it)
CS> that we 
CS> are already planning to write.

I had a quick scan of the 'Generic Trans...' thread, but I guess I will
have some reading to do before being able to follow.

A quick question, one part of the discussion was about detecting double
entries. Would it be wrong/difficult to allow the user to define the
equality of two transactions when importing?
For instance, my bank gives me a very simple mechanism: I can look at my
transactions for one account at the time in a Java application and dump
them to an ASCII file. Equality for me would be very simple (unless I am
missing something): same date, amount, description and (!) same balance,
and given the possibity I could easily define it in the settings for the
import of a given account dumps.

For the account identification, something similar could be valid: the user
may know and define things which would be extremely difficult to handle
consistently by coding.

Sorry if I am completely off-kilt ;O)

-- 
Michele Ravani                  Michele.Ravani@swissonline.ch
"Those who live hoping, die singing" My Gran