Sharing gnucash account files between users

[Derek Atkins]

The recommended way to share a data file across multuple users is to
have a shared network file system.  The data file must be shared
serially.  You don't want to use a subversion-style system because
you'll likely have merge issues.  GnuCash does not necessarily
re-create the same file every time it saves your data.  The order of
the objects can many times swap around, even if you didn't change any
data.  This means that the subversion merge could potentially
duplicate data as things move around a lot.

No, your best bet (and a SUPPORTED method) is to use an NFS server
and have all your users point gnucash at the same network share.
The limitation is that only one user can access the data file at
a time.  But we DO support this sharing model.

-derek

Ronan KERYELL <Ronan.Keryell at enstb.org> writes:

> I'm thinking about sharing some account files for some research projects
> between several users with a version control system such as subversion.
>
> Since gnucash files are in XML, I expect it can be possible with some
> careful merges in the case of conflicting writes (well, if we ask
> "uncompress mode" in the prefs :-) ).
>
> Does it make sense?
>
> Are there some subtle invariants we should ensure?
>
> I've encountered this one:
> <gnc:count-data cd:type="account">114</gnc:count-data>
> <gnc:count-data cd:type="transaction">315</gnc:count-data>
> that seems easy to manage.
>
> Can I expect the unique-ID-like such as
>        <split:id type="guid">d460704ada6fbde0e08c7a7cd71a608f</split:id>
> everywhere are sensibly random and are not, for example, a function of the old
> file state, in which case 2 futures of the same file would pick the same
> unique ID and we would always need to deal with non unique ID...

-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available