Building on Mac OS X with Fink

[Michael D. Crawford]

Greetings,

Today is the day I am fully committing to GnuCash.  I registered my 
corporation with the Province of Nova Scotia so I could open a local 
business checking account into which I deposited my first paycheck for 
my first Canadian client.  GoingWare Inc. is now a multinational 
corporation with one employee.  As I'm from the U.S. I need GnuCash's 
multiple currency support.

I'm folling the instructions on this page to install on Mac OS X 10.3.7:

Gnucash with GTK Themes on Mac OS X
http://www.edmz.org/archive/2004/06/30/macosx/gnucash-with-gtk-themes-on-mac-os-x.html

It is Google's #1 hit for "Mac OS X" gnucash.

What I didn't realize is that by using unstable, and running 
SelfUpdate-CVS, I'd be compiling everything from source.  It's been 
working for hours, and seems to be going well so far, but it's pretty 
scary to contemplate trusting my company's vital financial records and 
the livelihood of my little family to something I just compiled myself. 
  I'd be happier installing binaries that have been tested.

Even if the source code I'm building is known to work well, I'm not so 
sure my particular *build* will be good.

So my question for you is, is it really *necessary* for me to install 
the unstable gnucash - and all its unstable dependencies - just to use 
it?  Would I be better off starting over and not using unstable?  There 
is a stable CVS version.

The package information at http://fink.sourceforge.net/ says that for 
10.3, gnucash is available in the following versions:

1.8.9-14 stable
1.8.9-17 CVS stable
1.8.11-1 CVS unstable

So it seems that by using unstable, I get 1.8.11 rather than 1.8.9.  Is 
that going to be an important different for me, worth the risk?  Note 
that I need all the small business features I can get.

Looking at the announcements for 1.8.10 and 1.8.11, it looks like many 
bugs were fixed in 1.8.10, so maybe I really *am* better off with 
unstable.  Also 1.8.9 is over a year old.

I also discovered a different set of OS X installation instructions:

http://homepage.mac.com/elliottmce/gnucash_guide/

Thank you

Mike
-- 
Michael D. Crawford
GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting
http://www.goingware.com
crawford at goingware.com

   Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow.

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