libofx in Debian

[Thomas Bushnell BSG]

On Sun, 2008-01-13 at 22:27 +0100, Christian Stimming wrote:
> GnuCash has a built-in importer for OFX files in the src/import-export/ofx 
> module. This importer requires libofx. If libofx is not available, 
> the "Import OFX file" is no longer available. There are no plans by any of 
> the current developers of rewriting that OFX file importer module so that it 
> would work without libofx.

What happens if libofx is available, but the important functionality
reports an error instead of doing the usual thing?  Does gnucash fail
gracefully or badly in this case?  (This is crucial for my decision
about whether to cripple or drop libofx from Debian, if that turns out
to be necessary.)

> Additionally, GnuCash has a bunch of features using aqbanking in the 
> src/import-export/hbci module. Currently, this GnuCash module offers some 
> online banking functionality including statement download, which implies 
> internally some kind of file parsing comparable to a file import. When the 
> online banking uses OFX DirectConnect (as opposed to e.g. HBCI), 
> aqbanking-2.x was using libofx to parse that data, but aqbanking-3.x will be 
> using a parser of its own for that. Hence, aqbanking without libofx in 
> aqbanking-2.x would not offer OFX DirectConnect, but in aqbanking-3.x it will 
> have it even without libofx.

Ok, I'm not certain I understand one point.  If libofx is not
configured, but aqbanking is, then gnucash "Import OFX file" will be
gone, but OFX Direct Connect and HBCI will be available.  (Assuming that
aqbanking is working fine for whichever of these is chosen, that is.)

> As for porting GnuCash to aqbanking-3.x: The newer library is not source 
> compatible to the older one at all. Hence, it is impossible to have gnucash 
> source code that can work with both aqbanking2 and aqbanking3 - there are way 
> too much changes. We have a wiki page that lists all TODO items that need to 
> be done in gnucash. I'd estimate this to be 1-2 weeks work if you are already 
> familiar with gnucash, or 3-4 weeks if you are not. I won't do this because I 
> don't have time.

Right.  Of course, aqbanking2 will not be maintained anymore, so the
work will have to be done eventually regardless, right?

> For importing OFX files into gnucash, libofx is required and it is going to be 
> this way until someone rewrites the "Import OFX file" to use a different 
> parser. One possibility is to use the OFX file parser of aqbanking3 and 
> re-using parts of the import-export/hbci module, which will then replace the 
> import-export/ofx module. However, of course the OFX file parser of 
> aqbanking3 has a completely different API and this requires additional 
> developer work. 

Gotcha.

How public are these things?  Perhaps the HBCI/OFX users could be
recruited to help out.

The problem with libofx is much worse than the problem with aqbanking2
and the GPL.  Currently, libofx is itself violating the copyright on the
relevant DTD files, as far as I can tell.

Thomas