[GNC-dev] Single User Installation location on Linux

[David Cousens]

The wiki Building on Linux currently recommends doing a single user local
installation to $HOME/.local.

Frank Ellenberger pointed out to me in a thread
(http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/GNC-How-to-install-GnuCash-from-Source-for-Linux-tt4716225.html)
on the User forum that this results in $HOME/.local/share containing both
program and user configuration data in $HOME/.local/share/gnucash.

The data seems to happily coexist, i.e. no folders or files from the program
and configuration data seem to have the same name and make uninstall appears
to leave program data in that location after uninstalling. The following is
a list of the accounts in the location after an install to $HOME/.local. The
files/folders marked with a * following them are the ones which were present
in that location prior to installing GnuCash in $HOME/.local  (my user
config data from my normal installation running from in /usr/local). After
an uninstall, the files seem to be deleted but the folders are not generally
deleted so an uninstall of the program is not complete.

$HOME/.local/share/gnucash*/accounts
                                         /books    *
                                         /checks   *
                                         /gtkbuilder
                                         /icons
                                         /jqplot
                                         /pixmaps
                                         /python
                                         /scm
                                         /translog   *
                                         /ui*
                                         /accelerator-map   *
                                         /expressions-2.0   *
                                         /qif-accounts-map   *
                                         /saved-reports-2.8   *
                                         /saved-reports-2.8-backup   *
                                         /stylesheets-2.0     *

If I create a directory .apps under $HOME then GnuCash installs to it
without any problem but no link from $HOME/.local/bin to the executable in
$HOME/.apps  is created by the installation and the user would have to
create this this manually. Once this is done GnuCash seems to run  fine from
$HOME/.apps as a single user app.

The question is do we need to change the recommendation for installing under
$HOME/.local on the wiki and what should we change it to? If it is agreed
this is necessary I will modify the wiki to suit.

David Cousens



-----
David Cousens
--
Sent from: http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/GnuCash-Dev-f1435356.html