[GNC-dev] GnuCash Portable is no longer portable as of 3.x

[John Ralls]

> On Jul 10, 2018, at 8:32 PM, Wm via gnucash-devel <gnucash-devel at gnucash.org> wrote:
> 
> On 09/07/2018 04:03, John Ralls wrote:
> 
> Notice: Subject may be wrong at time of writing as I see there is a new PA version, I haven't tested it yet.
> 
>>> On Jul 8, 2018, at 7:35 PM, Wm via gnucash-devel <gnucash-devel at gnucash.org> wrote:
>>> 
>>> On 08/07/2018 15:52, John Ralls wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Wm,
>>>> Portable Apps is just another downstream distro.  We have no ability to enforce anything against any distro. Either they maintain a usable GnuCash in their package manager or they don’t and there’s not a darn thing we can do about it unless they have a technical reason for not doing so (like the recent dropping of the WebKit1 API by Fedora) and inform us of it. AFAIK we’ve never had any such contact from the Portable team.
>>> 
>>> That isn’t how PA present their re-packaging and use of GnuCash.
>> Oh? Please explain.
> 
> PA actively moves files and directories about and writes to and from the Registry so that an App can be picked up and put down on more than one PC, conceptually the person takes all their applications with them on a usb stick and plugs it in at work, home and school.  The PA folk take Applications that aren't portable from one system to another (many Windows programmes, GnuCash for example) and makes them Portable.
> 
> NB: my paraphrase in explanation, PortableApps.com explains it better.
> 
> This was working fine until PA didn't notice the changes between 2.x and 3.x and didn't get clue when things were pointed out to them by myself via e-mail and by reports from users of the portable version (I think distro may not fit, depending on how we define a distro).
> 
> There are considerable advantages and conveniences to the PA way when it comes to backups, networked drives, people needing to take GnuCash with them when they go to a conference and so on that GnuCash doesn't natively support because it does stuff that is illogical to me; why would an invoice format or budget that takes hours to build (and almost any other well constructed report of general and regular use) be stored *per_user* and even if it is the same user why store it uniquely *per_a_user's_different_computers* rather than associated closely with the book itself ... but this probably isn't the message for visiting that again.  Clearly someone at GnuCash towers thinks MicroSoft got AppData storage right :(
> 
> Hint: Putting something in \AppData\Roaming doesn't mean you take it with you from one PC to another as you roam about.
> 
>>>> A question for you: Why did you choose to use GnuCash Portable instead of the GnuCash Windows bundle from www.gnucash.org <http://www.gnucash.org/>?
>>> 
>>> I don't use it myself, I use it on other people's behalf.
>>> 
>>> Reasons?
>>> 
>>> Convenience. I can say "don't update to GnuCash 3.x until it is working right for you" rather than having them try early versions that I know won't do what they expect.
>>> 
>>> Backups. PortableApps puts data in more sensible places by default than GnuCash does, or used to.  <--- See the circle here?
>> GnuCash puts data wherever you tell it to. It has defaults, but they’re easily overridden with environment variables.
> 
> OK, update the wiki so users understand what to change so all the bits in the weird Windows file space can be put conveniently next to the books they belong to.  <-- that isn't going to happen, is it?  Someone bought into the Windows model of where things go and Reports (and other .gnucash elements) have ended up in very personal space rather than being closely associated with the data (book) they belong to and are completely fucking useless in isolation of said file.  Who in their right mind would want anyone else's
> ..\AppData\Roaming\GnuCash
> without the matching book?
> 
> What I think you should have done was put .gnucash in the same dir as the data.  Not hard.  All that is then needed is for Fred and Mary to add their name to their chosen versions of the Balance Sheet rather than this increasing separation of items that belong together.
> 
> I mean, if you ran a restaurant would you store the menu a mile away from the people dealing with the food and the customers? <-- I'm not sure that analogy really works but in the interests of self deprecation I'll leave it.  Anything is allowed anywhere in the USA after Trump, right? :)

Wm,

Nothing you said suggests anything other than that Portable Apps is just another distro. The purposes of the distribution and the version tracking are immaterial.

You’re correct that %APPDATA%\Roaming isn’t for sneaker net. It’s for the user’s presence on different machines in a workgroup or Windows Domain.

Apparently what is illogical to you is perfectly reasonable to just about everyone else on the planet. The settings that go into %APPDATA% are that user’s customizations and history. Every other OS also has standard locations for configurations and preferences and we try to keep GnuCash compliant with the standards on each OS. Since those standards have been around for a very long time indeed (almost 50 years in the case of Unix and its derivatives) it seems extremely unlikely to me that Portable Apps don’t have their own convention... but as I said, since they have never to my knowledge communicated with us I have no idea what it might be and there’s no way that we can accommodate them. Of course if they’re modifying any part of GnuCash--including the build system--then they’re obliged to provide their users (not us) with the source code for their modifications.

The bottom line here is that this isn’t the GnuCash project’s problem and we have no way to coerce the Portable Apps folks to fix it for you.

Oh, and the wiki article you want is https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Configuration_Locations <https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Configuration_Locations>.

Regards,
John Ralls