[GNC-dev] Preferences for Accounting Period start-date and end-date lost on 4.9 Install

[Chris Good]

-----Original Message-----
From: john <jralls at ceridwen.us> 
Sent: Monday, 3 January 2022 11:40 AM
To: Chris Good <goodchris96 at gmail.com>
Cc: gnucash-devel at gnucash.org
Subject: Re: [GNC-dev] Preferences for Accounting Period start-date and
end-date lost on 4.9 Install

> On Jan 2, 2022, at 4:25 PM, Chris Good <goodchris96 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi All,
> 
> I installed Gnucash 4.9 on my Windows 10 machine (was 4.4) and the 
> Preferences for Accounting Period start-date and end-date were lost.
> 
> They have gone back to the default 1/1/1970.
> 
> Looking in the registry I can see they have been migrated (moved) from
> HKCU\Software\GSettings\org\gnucash\window\pages\account-tree\summary\
> [start -date etc]
> 
>  To
> 
> HKCU\Software\GSettings\org\gnucash\GnuCash\window\pages\account-tree\
> summary
> 
> but the Preference dialog and the Accounts page still seem to be 
> looking at the old keys.
> 
> I set them again using the preferences dialog and now they are in both 
> the old and new locations.
> 
> After View, Refresh the Accounts page is showing the correct 
> Total(Period) figures again.
> 
> If it makes any difference, the first time I opened 4.9 it was with 
> the --nofile arg.
> 
> Should the old or new schema location be used?
> 
> HKCU\Software\GSettings\org\gnucash\general\prefs-version         = 404
> HKCU\Software\GSettings\org\gnucash\GnuCash\general\prefs-version = 
> 4009

The new schema is correct for GnuCash 4.7 and later.

Regards,
John Ralls

Hi John,

I put the registry back to how it was before I ran 4.9 (my BackupGnuCash
utility saves
the state of the Registry) and started 4.9 with args
--debug --log gnc.pref=debug --log gnc.app-utils.gsettings=debug
(no --nofile this time).

This did something different to last time. Now the old path
HKCU\Software\GSettings\org\gnucash\window\pages\account-tree\summary
 is still correct and the new path
HKCU\Software\GSettings\org\gnucash\GnuCash\window\pages\account-tree\summar
y
exists but is empty.

The tracefile shows lots of subscribe warnings in the preferences migration
and also afterwards:

* 18:14:11  INFO <gnc.app-utils.gsettings>         [migrate_one_key]
Migrating 'org.gnucash.dialogs.import.csv:last-geometry' to
'org.gnucash.GnuCash.dialogs.import.csv:last-geometry'
* 18:14:11 DEBUG <gnc.app-utils.gsettings>         [enter
C:/gcdev64/gnucash/releases/src/gnucash-4.9/libgnucash/app-utils/gnc-gsettin
gs.cpp:gnc_gsettings_get_settings_ptr()] 
* 18:14:11 DEBUG <gnc.app-utils.gsettings>
[gnc_gsettings_get_settings_ptr] Looking for schema
org.gnucash.dialogs.import.csv returned gsettings 00000000
* 18:14:11  WARN <GLib-GIO>             subscribe() failed: only 64
different paths may be watched.

It seems this is from:
https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/glib/-/blob/main/gio/gregistrysettingsbackend
.c
Because we have to cache every registry value locally, reads are done
 *     from the cache rather than directly from the registry. Writes update
 *     both. This means that the backend will not work if the watch thread
is
 *     not running. A GSettings object always subscribes to changes so we
can
 *     be sure that the watch thread will be running, but if for some reason
 *     the backend is being used directly you should bear that in mind.

/* Testing (on Windows XP SP3) shows that WaitForMultipleObjects fails with
 * "The parameter is incorrect" after 64 watches. We need one for the
 * message_sent cond, which is allowed for in the way the watches_remaining
 * variable is used.
 */
#define MAX_WATCHES   64

g_registry_backend_subscribe()
  if (g_atomic_int_dec_and_test (&self->watch->watches_remaining))
    {
      g_atomic_int_inc (&self->watch->watches_remaining);
      g_warning ("subscribe() failed: only %i different paths may be
watched.", MAX_WATCHES);
      return;
    }

I've no idea why g_registry_backend_subscribe() is being called.
Perhaps it is for every GSettings object so the warning thread can monitor
changes?
I cannot find anything in the GSettings doco about a 64 limit on
subscriptions.

Anybody have any ideas about what in GnuCash is causing these errors in
Windows?
I haven't seen any of these subscribe warnings in my Linux system.

I may try to setup a Windows build environment so I can get a stack trace
when I get some time.
Do you have to pay for anything to do this for Windows?

Regards, Chris Good