Report Directories

[John Ralls]

> On Nov 18, 2025, at 12:13, flywire <flywire0 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> My guess is these were changed in:
> 
> https://github.com/Gnucash/gnucash/releases/tag/3.4
> released this Dec 31, 2018
> Set up filepath utils to determine the GNC_CONFIG_HOME in the same way as GNC_DATA_HOME.
> Until now GNC_CONFIG_HOME was more or less hard-coded. Now it can be set via environment variable GNC_CONFIG_HOME. In addition it will automatically be created to avoid potential user confusion.
> 
> I can't find any mention of DOT_GNUCASH_DIR and expect it was removed at this time.
> 
> This mess is the least of the concerns for anyone trying to follow the custom reports wiki.
> 
> Documentation links to directories:
> 
> https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Custom_Reports#Where_to_find_existing_reports
> GNC_DATA
> 
> https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Custom_Reports#Loading_Your_Report
> GNC_CONFIG_HOME -> GNC_USERCONFIG_DIR
> GNC_DATA_HOME -> GNC_USERDATA_DIR
> DOT_GNUCASH_DIR
> 
> https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Custom_Reports#The_Options-Generator
> GNC_DATA
> 
> https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Custom_Reports#Installation
> GNC_CONFIG_HOME -> GNC_USERCONFIG_DIR

There is no mess, there’s just a couple of confusing names in the About dialog.

Had you read https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Configuration_Locations#DOT_GNUCASH_DIR more carefully  you would have seen the note at the top: "Versions: 2.6.x and older only.”  It’s there for users with very old GnuCash versions.

GNC_USERDATA_DIR and GNC_USERCONFIG_DIR are just titles used in the About dialog. The environment variables are in fact GNC_CONFIG_HOME and GNC_CONFIG_HOME, see https://github.com/Gnucash/gnucash/blob/stable/libgnucash/core-utils/gnc-filepath-utils.cpp. The environment variables are retrieved on lines 777 and 859; the output block for the About dialog begins at line 1315.  The author of that block unfortunately chose to capitalize the variable names used in that file instead of the environment variable names that are apparent to the user.

Regards,
John Ralls

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