[GNC-dev] Documentation update problems

[Geert Janssens]

Op vrijdag 21 september 2018 01:16:51 CEST schreef David Cousens:
> Adrien,
> 
> I think it is better to leave packaging apps to specialists rather than the
> general user.

> Using flatpak and snap can be better addressed on the
> Installation page rather than a building page which also addresses using ,
> Software Mmanager and installation of the version supported by the
> particular distribution version.
> 
I have recently played a bit with flatpak, and I think it's useful to see it 
as an independent platform.

The "generic" instructions as we are currently presenting them work for linux 
and likely also for other open systems such as the BSD*'s, MacPorts, 
Homebrew,... For all these systems the preparations (that is setting up the 
dependencies) vary wildly, but the eventual build steps are always the same.

For the integrated MacOS and Windows builds we have set up specific build and 
package tooling (in the gnucash-on-osx and gnucash-on-windows repositories). 
The build instructions in these cases are different (though with some extra 
effort one code even use the generic instructions for part of the process). 
That's why I hinted earlier to treat them separately.

The same goes flatpak builds. The instructions are completely different. On 
the other hand it's surprisingly easy to generate a flatpak once one has 
access to a proper manifest. So as the build result is distro agnostic I think 
it's worth documenting it. Thing is I'm still pretty new to it, so I don't 
know the pitfalls yet.

> I was thinking more of a few notes that people ouside the GnuCash developer
> user group might pick up on to remind them to compile with all options and
> setup access to the operating system utilities where needed, preferrably as
> part of the app setup rather than a post configuration. I don't know enough
> about flatchat or snap to know if it is possible to do that but I would
> expect it to be possible
> 
I don't know about snap either.

But in theory one could do that for flatpaks indeed. The flatpak manifest for 
gnucash already allows fairly broad access by default. There is a bug in it 
still with respect to "localhost" access to a db server running on the local 
PC. 127.0.0.1 works as a workaround.

The other issue is drives and usb sticks mounted outside of the user's home 
directory. It's pretty hard to configure this universally though as it depends 
on the linux distribution and/or user configuration where they will end up.

Regards,

Geert