transfer of files between PCs

[hendrik at topoi.pooq.com]

On Fri, Jan 12, 2007 at 10:58:28AM -0500, Derek Atkins wrote:
> 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.

Nonetheless, I tracked down an annoying reconciled imbalance a few month 
ago by simply using diff between the gnucash files that did and did not 
have the imbalance.

That was with 1.8.  Has it changed for 2.0?  Or was I just lucky?

-- hendrik

q> 
> -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