Looking for GDA backend testers

[Phil Longstaff]

A couple of people have e-mailed me asking if they can test the GDA 
backend.  I think I'm ready for this.

Build requirements.  I build with libgda 3.0.0 
(http://www.gnome-db.org/).  It doesn't matter where you put it, but it 
must be available to pkg-config.  If you build with --enable-debug, all 
sql statements will be written to stdout (maybe stderr, I'm not sure).  
For initial testing, this would be desirable to provide extra debug 
info.  Hmmm... I wonder if I can get it sent to /tmp/gnucash.trace.
The repository branch is gda-dev2 (so svn checkout 
http://svn.gnucash.org/repo/gnucash/branches/gda-dev2).

Libgda supports a number of different backend databases.  I have done my 
testing with sqlite and mysql, but other databases are supported (see 
http://www.gnome-db.org/Providers_status).

When built with libgda, gnucash will support both the xml files and 
libgda databases.  When the file is provided on the command line, the 
url can be:
    xml://<xml-file-name>
    gda://@<gda-config-name>
    gda://<provider>:<dbname>

where <xml-file-name> is the name of a current format xml file, 
<gda-config-name> is the name of pre-configured libgda dataset name, 
<provider> is a provider name and <dbname> is a database name.  The 
pre-configured datasets are stored in ~/.libgda/config which is an xml 
config file.

When the sqlite provider is used, libgda adds ".db" to the file name, so 
that if you use gda://sqlite:/home/me/foo, the db will be stored in 
/home/me/foo.db.

Once you open your xml data file, you can save to a gda backend either 
1) by using the save-as dialog which will save to an sqlite db or 2) 
using the new File menu Database Connection entry.  This dialog provides 
1) a combo box listing your pre-defined datasets 2) a text box in which 
you can enter <provider>:<dbname> and a set of radio buttons to allow 
you to select which should be used.  Once the data is stored, the url 
used will be remembered when you rerun gnucash.  Versions of gnucash 
without libgda will not understand gda:// urls and will start as though 
--nofile had been added to the command line.  Saving is slow.

Known bug: when you open a libgda file, the account balances on the 
account page aren't set up properly.

This is not ready for production use.  Please report any problems here, 
not to bugzilla.

Phil