Will GnuCash ever work for me?

[Linas Vepstas]

On Mon, Sep 17, 2001 at 12:50:39PM -0700, Andy Davidson was heard to remark:
> At 11:01 AM 9/17/01 -0500, Linas Vepstas wrote:
> >Well, propbably not.  Upgrading to gnucash-1.6 is difficult.  My
> >apologies for this, but its just a fact of life.  The right thing to 
> >do is to wait for mandrake 8.1 or whatever version includes gnucash-1.6.  
> >Screwing with this, as you have learned, just gives you carpet burns.
> >
> >Amybe we need to figure out a polite way of saying just exactly this,
> >and putting it on the website.
> 
> I ran into similar difficulties and just gave up.  I upgraded my copy of
> Quicken and am back using it on Windows.  I'll just wait for this to settle
> out when Debian Woody comes out.
> 
> But my concern is: will I run into this same convoluted mess with some
> future revision of gnucash?  Or is this likely to be a one-time disaster? I
> don't want to become dependent on an application that is going to foul me
> up in the future.

Hmm.

Installing today's GnuCash on yesterday's Redhat 6.2 is like installing
some Windows XP application on Windows 98: hard when its not impossible.

With open source, you see a development process that is hidden when
dealing with proprietary software.  Imagine a company developing
proprietary Windows XP software: you wouldn't be able to purchase
or download the software until *after* MS has shipped the base.  
This doesn't mean that no one writes any XP software until XP is
released.  On the contrary, software companies want to be able to
ship on the same day that XP ships, or as soon as possible after that.
Its just that you never publically see these versions: they're hidden.

With gnucash, we used new features that most linux distro's do not
yet ship. We're waiting for them to be incorporated into the standard
base, and to ship standard, which we know they will.  What we are *not*
doing is hiding this fact from you. 

I can't promise that this won't happen again.  It may or may not. It
depends on what new features gnucash will need, and what new features
that other bleeding edge libraries will be providing.  And it depends on
how quickly the existing distributions psupport the new libraries.
Although its been painful to front-run, if we hadn't, then gnucash 1.6
today wouldn't be as sophisticated as it is.  Meanwhile, I've found that
1.4 works great for most of my needs.  And if it happens again, then
stick to 1.6.  Don't upgrade until your base distro has upgraded.

--linas

p.s. I know you said 'debian': I used redhat as a generic example.