Report Directories

[John Ralls]

> On Nov 18, 2025, at 22:23, flywire <flywire0 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> John, thank you for taking a look and giving your comments and guidance. I think reliable custom report documentation is worthwhile and it really falls to the wiki page we are discussing and https://github.com/Gnucash/gnucash/blob/stable/gnucash/report/reports/example/sample-report.scm
> 
> > There is no mess, there’s just a couple of confusing names in the About dialog.
> 
> mess:
> 1. a dirty or untidy state of things or of a place.
> 2. a situation that is confused and full of problems.

Well, if you think the wiki page is dirty or untidy that’s on you, as history shows that you’ve made 2/3 of the edits on that page over the last 5 years. I took you to mean the second meaning, "confused and full of problems” and that’s a gross exaggeration.
> 
> > 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.
> 
> https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Custom_Reports
> This documentation applies from GnuCash Version 5.0. For prior versons (sic) use the previous version.

Which you added when you ripped out the instructions applying to older versions: https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/index.php?title=Custom_Reports&diff=21616&oldid=21603.

> 
> Clearly, DOT_GNUCASH_DIR which applies to "Versions: 2.6.x and older only.” should be removed.

OK.

> 
> > 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.
> 
> It looked like a duck. Let's fix that. Why not make the name consistent with the environment variable or default value?

The main problem and the reason I reverted your last edit was because GNC_CONFIG_HOME and GNC_DATA_HOME are anchors on the Configuration Location page. GNC_USERCONFIG_DIR and GNC_USERDATA_DIR are not, so your edit broke the links.

> 
> Also, the difficulty demonstrated above repeating information from About dialog without a copy facility:
> 
> Name                  Environment variable
> GNC_USERDATA_DIR   -> GNC_DATA_HOME
> GNC_USERCONFIG_DIR -> GNC_CONFIG_HOME

Huh? That’s not what the About Dialog says and I don’t understand what the inability to select the label text has to do with the Custom Reports wiki page.

> 
> > How to get Report Development Environment Working in Windows https://lists.gnucash.org/pipermail/gnucash-devel/2021-September/045941.html
> 
> WARNING
> This section is out of date and will not run with GnuCash ≥ 4.6
> 
> My recollection is there are many other issues but I got no buy-in when I reviewed it a few years ago. I'm not suggesting it is John's job to fix these but his review is welcome.

Again, Huh? The email you linked doesn’t have that warning. The Custom Reports page from before then didn’t have that warning. You’ve extensively *rewritten*, not reviewed, the Custom Reports page in the 5 years since that email. As I recall, that email thread was your motivation for doing that rewrite.
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