[GNC-dev] How to contribute to GnuCash?

[Geert Janssens]

Op zaterdag 27 april 2019 01:01:38 CEST schreef John Ralls:
> What Geert meant is that our current engine code *isn't* particularly
> portable, though I think that since it compiles OK on MacOS it shouldn't
> have too much trouble with iOS either. It's a mix of C and C++ and the main
> dependencies are Boost and Gnome Glib; the XML file backend also depends on
> libxml2 and the SQL backend depends on libdbi.
> 
> The public mirror for our git repository is at
> https://github.com/gnucash/gnucash. Note that the stable branch is "maint".
> Doxygen API docs are at https://code.gnucash.org/docs/MAINT.
> 
> Regards,
> John Ralls
> 
The devil is in the details... The engine code currently still depends on 
guile as well, which is a scripting language. Doesn't Apple impose 
restrictions on that ?
I currently don't have a full overview of where guile is used in the engine 
code. I know the option system is heavily dependent on it, but that's 
primarily used by the report system.

Regards,

Geert

> > On Apr 26, 2019, at 12:56 PM, John <john at vicinno.com> wrote:
> > 
> > Thanks for bringing it up. A portable engine code is definitely more
> > meaningful. Can you point me at some document or source code on portable
> > engine code? we just want to get more details and estimate the work load.
> > 
> > Thanks,
> > John
> > 
> > On Fri, Apr 26, 2019 at 9:33 AM Geert Janssens
> > <geert.gnucash at kobaltwit.be> wrote: Hi,
> > 
> > An iOS companion app would be great.
> > 
> > The android app took the approach of reimplementing all the business logic
> > required to read (and write?) a gnucash data file rather than using the
> > gnucash engine code.
> > 
> > I can understand why as the engine code is currently difficult to port to
> > different platforms. It is one of our goals to make this easier, but
> > there's still a lot of work ahead to get to that state.
> > 
> > If you feel like joining that effort it would be very welcome as a
> > portable
> > engine would greatly benefit gnucash and all derived apps on all platforms
> > (including the android app and a future ios app).
> > 
> > Don't feel obliged of course. I did want to bring it up anyway so you know
> > this goal exists and may be useful for your app in the future.
> > 
> > Regards,
> > 
> > geert
> > 
> > Op donderdag 25 april 2019 17:41:00 CEST schreef John Ralls:
> > > > On Apr 24, 2019, at 10:13 PM, John <john at vicinno.com> wrote:
> > > > 
> > > > Hello,
> > > > 
> > > > I am the founder of a mobile app startup and a big fan of GnuCash.  My
> > > > team
> > > > has some free time now. I wonder if we can contribute to develop an
> > > > iOS
> > > > companion app like current Android one. Can you let me know if you
> > > > think
> > > > that's a good idea? and if yes, how to start?
> > > > 
> > > > Thanks,
> > > > John
> > > 
> > > It's a good idea if you're going to commit to maintaining and supporting
> > > it
> > > for a reasonable value of forever.  The GnuCash team hasn't the time nor
> > > expertise to accept such an app as a contribution.
> > > 
> > > To get started I'd think it best to contact Ngewi via the
> > > GnuCash-for-Android support channels and discuss whether his design is
> > > portable to iOS and what lessons he's learned and improvements he might
> > > make.
> > > 
> > > Once you're ready to start work I expect you'll want to recruit users
> > > for
> > > usability testing of your UI mockups and later for beta-testing. I'm
> > > sure
> > > some of our users will be interested in helping, though if you're
> > > contemplating a commercial product you'll need to figure out the right
> > > way
> > > to engage with a FLOSS community.
> > > 
> > > Regards,
> > > John Ralls
> > > _______________________________________________
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