gnucash and gnome

[David T.]

Back in January, I reported my experience (successful, once the huge downloads
completed) on reinstalling GnuCash when I upgraded my Macbook Pro to Leopard,
along with the steps I took:

http://article.gmane.org/gmane.os.apple.fink.beginners/20926

I did not find the steps that difficult. For reference, while I have a lot of
experience with computers, my experience in the technical realm of compiling
and building application is zero. I, too, gave up on MacPorts a while back.

As I pointed out then, my main Fink application is GnuCash, so most of the bugs
that Richard mentions haven't bitten me. AFAIK, the documentation problems
under Leopard haven't gotten fixed (I'd love it if someone would contradict me
on that!), but other than that, it's been smoooooooooth sailing.

I've also given up on Fink Commander and simply done my best to learn the
basics of the command line version, which has worked pretty well. Once you
understand 'fink install gnucash2' you're well on you way...

David

--- Richard Talley <rich.talley at gmail.com> wrote:

> Peter,
> 
> I'm running OS X 10.4.11 and have had no difficulty using Fink to
> install and run GC. I'm currently at GC 2.2.4 and I'm just waiting for
> the package maintainer to add 2.2.5 source to the repository and then
> I'll upgrade. Getting everything compiled did take quite a few hours
> but I'm still running a G4 machine. I'm sure things will be much
> faster when I get a newer machine. My experience is that Fink, being
> based on the Debian package system, handles dependencies intelligently
> and rarely requires any manual intervention on my part. The Fink
> Commander gui makes things even easier. You do need to keep Fink
> itself properly updated.
> 
> You might consider wiping out all your Fink installed stuff and trying
> again using Fink Commander.
> 
> I've never had any luck with MacPorts and just gave up on it a long time ago.
> 
> I'm holding off moving to Leopard because so many things concerning
> X11 and Fink are broken or buggy; the Fink mailing lists are full of
> messages from people about their problems on Leopard.
> 
> I've also grabbed source for various things, mostly command line
> utilities that haven't been available through Fink, and manually
> configured and compiled them. That's gone pretty well, although
> sometimes I'll have to add a symbolic link because something is
> installed in a different place than the program expects.
> 
> It's one of the nicest things about OS X - there's this lovely,
> well-integrated Aqua interface for the average user and for a lot of
> my day to day use of the computer, where things "just work" (for the
> most part and certainly a whole lot better than Windows IMO), and then
> there's this BSD system for the power user. There's a whole universe
> of powerful and interesting Un*x source code out there that will never
> be ported to any sort of GUI, much less Aqua, but which compiles and
> runs just fine on OS X. For a lot of people, it's the best of both
> worlds.
> 
> That said, I know that dealing with things like X11 and Fink are
> pretty intimidating to the average user. You end up with something
> that doesn't fit in well at all with the rest of the system. And I've
> found that GC 2.2.4, although stable and functional, is not a well
> behaved OS X citizen, even under X11. The help files are unavailable
> and the splash screen leaks out of X11 through my other windows,
> meaning I can't use anything else while GC loads. Ugly, ugly, ugly.
> 
> You need to keep in mind that this situation is largely out of the
> control of the GnuCash developers, and they are dependent, as are the
> rest of us, on work done elsewhere in other projects. The Win32 API
> dates back to the mid-nineties; it's well understood and there's a
> large body of knowledge and mature tools available to the developer.
> Of most importance to GC on Windows, Tor Lillqvist's project to port
> gtk+ to Windows dates back to 1997.
> 
> OTOH, OS X is a much newer beast than Win32 and has gone through some
> radical changes from version to version. Apple has been willing to
> break things in order to make OS X better, while Microsoft has prized
> backward compatibility at the cost of some real cruft and API
> ugliness.
> 
> If you really want to see gtk+ based programs like GnuCash become
> proper Aquafied programs no longer needing X11, then help port gtk+
> plus to OS X:
> 
> http://developer.imendio.com/projects/gtk-macosx/
> 
> When I can find the time, I'll try to build a proper OS X GnuCash app
> bundle. GnuCash is quite a bit more complicated a program than the
> apps that have so far been successfully built using the gtk-macosx
> tools, so we'll see how it goes. I'm sure eventually everything will
> fall into place.
> 
> In the meantime, if you're using OS X and really want to use GnuCash,
> you seem to have three choices at this time:
> 
> 1. Install X11 and use Fink to install GnuCash and all its
> dependencies. That has worked well enough for my purposes.
> 
> 2. Install Windows in a virtual machine under OS X and use the Windows
> version of GnuCash.
> 
> 3. Install one of the friendlier distributions of Linux, such as
> Ubuntu, in a virtual machine under OS X and use the Linux version of
> GnuCash.
> 
> Hopefully, in the not too distant future, we'll have better choices.
> 
> (Since most on this mailing list seem to be Linux users, I'll just say
> that I also like and use Linux. I'm very agnostic about things like
> operating systems and programming languages, and I try to stay as far
> away as I can from flame wars and trolls on these subjects. I do try
> to also stay away from Windows as much as possible but use it when I
> have to and don't make a fuss. I hate helping friends and family
> members remove malware infestations from their Windows machines and
> always encourage them to consider the alternatives. For my personal
> use, I have found my OS X machine to be the nicest computer I've ever
> owned. As they say, undoubtedly YMMV.)
> 
> Rich
> 
> On Sat, May 3, 2008 at 9:24 AM, Peter Eldorson <drbjornberg at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Just to wade into the debate:
> > Apparently I'm one of the few answering Steve's email who operates from
> > a Mac platform. I'm also in complete agreement with him.
> >
> > My original version of GC was 1.8 downloaded using the Fink installer. I
> > tried upgrading to 2.0 through Fink, but I'm nowhere near sophisticated
> > enough to manage all the stable/unstable release issues, installation
> > errors and other programmer sludge that occurred so I never got the 2.0
> > release operational. Instead I abandoned Fink and tried MacPorts.
> > Eventually, after over 2 months of playing with editors that I didn't
> > think I would ever need to learn,  and hours of downloading I got a GC
> > 2.0 operational. It runs on a vestigial Gnome desktop on a Mac... is
> > anyone surprised?
> >
> > So then I tried upgrading to GC 2.2 using MacPorts. That was last fall
> > (October 2007). After going through another whole round of upgrading and
> > downloading, as near as I can figure there is still a conflict between
> > something called slib, guile, and half a dozen other dependencies.
> > Starting GC 2.2 resulted in a system hang that has been described by
> > several others on this list. No one apparently offered a solution and
> > the MacPorts guys list simply said that there wasn't a maintainer. And
> > one poster said I should try reloading the unstable versions from Fink
> > again. So I and probably everyone else with a MacOS has given up on GC.
> >
> > But Surprise again... I work in a Windows environment at my office. We
> > can't install or use applications that are not 'authorized' so I
> > downloaded Portable apps to a Western Digital portable harddrive.  They
> > all run fine from a USB port. This week I noticed that there was a GC
> > version available so I installed it. Wow. No problems! No programmer
> > sludge! No issues! And the program initiated without hanging the system!
> > Imagine, it took a Windows environment to show the great open sourcers
> > how to "get 'er dun".
> >
> > So like Steve, I want to use GC, and it's latest upgrade because it is
> > superior, even in an older version, to Intuit. But I have a Mac I want
> > to use for my personal and business finances, but I can't because the
> > 'geek' crowd have no interest in my problems. And the only solution
> > offered is to use the Windows environment GC.
> >
> > If you think about this for one second you'll see how truly ironic this
> > is : t hat the only really useful version of a great Open Source program
> > is written for the operating system that the Open Source community was
> > fundamentally started for in the first place!
> >
> > Thank you Steve for pointing this out. And I too wish to send my
> > congratulations to all the wonderful Gnucash volunteers!
> >
> > Any chance I'll see a version of GC that downloads, installs and runs
> > cleanly on a MacOS in the future? What version number would that be? 4.0?
> >
> > Peter
> >
> >
> > Steve Brenneis wrote:
> >> Folks,
> >>
> >> I'm sure you've heard much of this before, but I thought I would throw in
> my $0.02.
> >>
> >> I run a small business and was looking forward to using gnucash. I use
> Gentoo Linux for most of my server and laptop applications. Using portage, I
> checked out what would be necessary to put gnucash on my laptop. That's when
> the fun began. I am a KDE user, so I'm sure you know what's coming. The list
> of packages needed to install gnucash looks like this:
> >>
> >> gnome-base/libglade-2.6.2
> >> gnome-base/orbit-2.14.12
> >> x11-themes/gnome-icon-theme-2.20.0
> >> gnome-base/gnome-keyring-2.20.3
> >> gnome-base/gail-1.20.2
> >> gnome-base/libgnomeprint-2.18.4
> >> app-text/rarian-0.6.0-r1
> >> gnome-base/gnome-common-2.20.0
> >> net-misc/neon-0.26.4
> >> app-text/iso-codes-1.5
> >> x11-libs/libwnck-2.20.3
> >> dev-scheme/guile-1.8.3-r2
> >> net-libs/libsoup-2.2.104
> >> dev-scheme/slib-3.1.5-r1
> >> gnome-extra/libgsf-1.14.7
> >> app-text/docbook-xml-dtd-4.1.2-r6
> >> app-text/gnome-doc-utils-0.12.1
> >> net-libs/xulrunner-1.8.1.13
> >> gnome-base/gconf-2.20.1-r1
> >> gnome-base/libgnomecanvas-2.20.1.1
> >> gnome-base/libbonobo-2.20.4
> >> app-text/scrollkeeper-9999
> >> x11-libs/libsexy-0.1.11
> >> x11-libs/goffice-0.6.1
> >> x11-misc/notification-daemon-0.3.7
> >> gnome-base/libgnomeprintui-2.18.2
> >> x11-libs/libnotify-0.4.4
> >> gnome-base/gnome-vfs-2.20.1-r1
> >> gnome-base/libgnome-2.20.1.1
> >> gnome-base/libbonoboui-2.20.0
> >> gnome-base/libgnomeui-2.20.1.1
> >> gnome-base/gnome-mount-0.6
> >> gnome-extra/gtkhtml-3.16.3
> >> gnome-extra/yelp-2.20.0
> >> app-doc/gnucash-docs-2.2.0
> 
=== message truncated ===



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