transfer of files between PCs

[Derek Atkins]

hendrik at topoi.pooq.com writes:

> I've toyed with the idea of using a distributed revision control system, 
> like monotone, to do this.  In theory if you make changes on both 
> systems it should be able to merge them.  IN practice, I suspect it 
> might occasionally merge lines in such a way as to violate XML syntax.
> (the gnucash files were XML the last time I looked).
>
> Is there a DRCS that recognises XML syntax when merging?

You DEFNITELY to not want to use any kind of tool to try to
merge gnucash files.  The reason: gnucash doesn't maintain a
consistent file.  What I mean by this is that even if you make
no changes to your data file and then force gnucash to save,
the newly saved data file WILL be different than the previous
version.  GnuCash does not maintain a consistent order of objects
in the data file, so it's possible that the data objects get
moved around between subsequent saves.

This fact will confuse automated tools, so your merged data WILL
be wrong.

You should treat the gnucash data file as a binary object.

-derek
-- 
       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