[GNC-dev] Flatpak GnuCash and Finance::Quote

[john]

> On Oct 3, 2022, at 7:56 PM, Frank H. Ellenberger <frank.h.ellenberger at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> comments inline
> 
> Am 03.10.22 um 18:23 schrieb Bruce Schuck:
>>> Date: Sun, 2 Oct 2022 21:09:31 -0700 From: john <jralls at ceridwen.us>
>>> Correct. IIUC there are a lot of things not normally included in a
>>> flatpak installation required to run cpan, so it's not really a
>>> practical option. We build Finance::Quote and all of its dependencies
>>> from source tarballs, see
>>> https://github.com/Gnucash/gnucash-on-flatpak/blob/master/modules/finance-quote-sources.json.
>>> Unfortunately F::Q has a lot of dependencies and the list isn't
>>> stable, so keeping up with the latest often falls in the "too much
>>> effort" category and doesn't get done.
>>> If there's a better way, please share.
>> John,
>> Trust me, if I knew a better way I would share. But you answered my unasked question as to whether or not including GCC is feasible or may be included in the future.
> 
> From https://docs.flatpak.org/en/latest/building-introduction.html#software-development-kits-sdks etc. I would suspect, our users have to install org.gnome.sdk to have the compiler inside the flatpaks available.
> 
>> My concern is that the copy from GitHub ./lib/Finance to <flatpak path>, while working for the AlphaVantage currency fix, may not necessarily work for other modules that require those modules that need compiling to install not included in the flatpak.
>> Being a somewhat recent addition to the F::Q maintainer team (and lately the sole active member), I am unsure why there is a huge number of additional module requirements between 1.49 and 1.52.
> 
> It seems cpan generates on each run a different order of building the required modules. That makes it not really easy to find the diffs.

Bruce,

Frank is the one who's actually done the work of getting the Finance::Quote build into the Flatpak, so he's the best one to answer the question.

Adding to his response, keep in mind that the F::Q build starts from whatever Flatpak's perl has and building a full dependency stack, so if something halfway down changes one of its dependencies it can require substantial changes even if F::Q didn't change anything.

On the other hand, the latest F::Q might work perfectly with the older version of that dependency. Like most package managers cpan is quite aggressive in pushing the latest of everything, so using it as a guide might be making extra work... but then not using it as a guide is also extra work. :-/

Regards,
John Ralls