[GNC-dev] About budgets in 3.8, 3.9 and 3.10

[Christopher Lam]

Next addendum: your existing budget data will behave well when reverse
balances=credit accounts, but the *featured* data will be stable with *any*
reverse balances global preference option.

On Fri, 10 Apr 2020, 11:28 am Christopher Lam, <christopher.lck at gmail.com>
wrote:

>
>
> On Fri, 10 Apr 2020, 10:20 am Christopher Lam, <christopher.lck at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Deadline is 11 April at noon GMT, so, about 34 hours from now.
>>
>> For both: *existing* datafile and especially *4.x-featured *datafile (in
>> bug report).
>>
>> Please test:
>> - creation of budget amounts
>> - use estimate to prefill cells
>> - all totals in all 5 account types A/L/Inc/Exp/Eq behave appropriately
>>
>
> Addendum this is not simply an arithmetic test; it *****must**** also
> confirm that the totals and signs are sensible for the purpose of
> budgeting. Hence the difficulty of a one person coder to make it work. For
> example, we can budget a liability account regularly until we have enough
> deposit for a huge loan, or we can budget a liability account regularly for
> the loan repayments. IIUC both approaches are "valid" but the signs will be
> opposite. Other counter examples likely exist.
>
> - budget.scm report (optionally other budget reports but these are lower
>> priority) and especially difference column.
>>
>> On Fri, 10 Apr 2020 at 02:16, Adrien Monteleone <
>> adrien.monteleone at lusfiber.net> wrote:
>>
>>> Thank You! This makes it so much easier to test. I’ll give the flatpak a
>>> spin and see what I find. I still haven’t set up a build environment for
>>> Mac yet. (and watching a recent thread on the subject makes it look
>>> daunting compared to Linux)
>>>
>>> This is a busy weekend for me though. What kind of time frame do you
>>> have and is there something in particular you’re looking to find. (other
>>> than just loosely that the totals appear to work)
>>>
>>> Regards,
>>> Adrien
>>>
>>> > On Apr 9, 2020 w15d100, at 9:10 PM, Christopher Lam <
>>> christopher.lck at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> >
>>> > 2020-04-07 nightly available at
>>> https://code.gnucash.org/builds/win32/maint/
>>> > flatpaks available at https://code.gnucash.org/builds/flatpak/maint/
>>> - use
>>> > between 2020-04-04 and 2020-04-10
>>> >
>>> > On Fri, 10 Apr 2020 at 01:38, Christopher Lam <
>>> christopher.lck at gmail.com>
>>> > wrote:
>>> >
>>> >> This topic is about budgets.
>>> >>
>>> >> We now know that budgets are currently inherently flawed: they
>>> *assume*
>>> >> that sign-reversal = credit-accounts, and do not work well at all
>>> with any
>>> >> other sign-reversal option. In addition, there was a feature request
>>> (bug
>>> >> 781345) that introduced budget equity into the equation, and I still
>>> do not
>>> >> know whether a budget equity amount is a correct approach.
>>> >>
>>> >> In 4.x series there is a planned *fix* which will scan budget amounts,
>>> >> use heuristics to determine the most likely sign-reversal approach
>>> used
>>> >> during budget creation, internally unreverse the amounts, and upgrade
>>> the
>>> >> datafile so that it cannot be damaged by 3.7 or earlier.
>>> >>
>>> >> Therefore 3.8 was the first release which could handle both old and
>>> fixed
>>> >> budget amounts. Unfortunately, the interpretation of budget signs
>>> was/is
>>> >> very difficult, which explained the switch to
>>> >> asset/liability/equity/income/expense totals, which are impervious to
>>> >> budget signs. Unfortunately users missed the "Remaining to Budget"
>>> facility.
>>> >>
>>> >> Therefore 3.9 was, during development, tested with
>>> >> https://github.com/Gnucash/gnucash/pull/630 and was deemed "good
>>> enough"
>>> >> to fix to restore the remaining to budget total. Unfortunately the
>>> >> liability budget amount issue was tested incorrectly.
>>> >>
>>> >> For a week, the git-maint contained a candidate fix, discussed in
>>> >> https://bugs.gnucash.org/show_bug.cgi?id=797659 -- but there is
>>> >> insufficient beta testing on the budgets for now. So, 3.10 will
>>> retain 3.9
>>> >> behaviour unless the fix is fully tested.
>>> >>
>>> >> Conclusion: this is a call for beta testers, using the 2020-04-07
>>> nightly
>>> >> (the only one with the fix), to test both their datafiles and the
>>> >> *4.x-featured* datafile attached in the bug report. Please
>>> *especially*
>>> >> test the liability and equity totals, both with existing datafile and
>>> >> featured datafile.
>>> >>
>>> >> Flame away. I will try to be available throughout the day for testing.
>>> >> Win32 users have only 1 build to test, Linux users may also build from
>>> >> 882fd22ca rather than git-maint which has returned to 3.9 behaviour.
>>> I'm
>>> >> not sure how MacOS users can test.
>>> >>
>>> > _______________________________________________
>>> > gnucash-devel mailing list
>>> > gnucash-devel at gnucash.org
>>> > https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-devel
>>> >
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
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>>> gnucash-devel at gnucash.org
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>>>
>>