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

[Adrien Monteleone]

I just posted my first result and impression to the bug report, though I’m sure you saw that already. (this is more for the benefit of list readers not following the bug)

The signs aren’t making sense, and the amounts aren’t adding up correctly.

Regards,
Adrien

> On Apr 10, 2020 w15d101, at 5:59 AM, Christopher Lam <christopher.lck at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 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.
>>>>>>