Installation on XP.

[Geert Janssens]

On donderdag 25 augustus 2011, Robert Eldon Taylor wrote:
> John Layman wrote:
> > I run GNUcash on Windows, and, yes, you can relocate those files from the
> > user folder to Application Data.  The key is to add a HOME= setting to
> > the file:
> > 
> > C:/Program Files/gnucash/etc/gnucash/environment
> > 
> > Below is the configuration setting from my XP system:
> > 
> > HOME=C:/Documents and Settings/John/Application Data/Gnucash
> > 
> > Initially, you'll have to manually create that directory and move the
> > files over to it.  Thereafter, just remember that your changed
> > environment file will be overwritten by a software update.  Each time
> > you update to a new version of GNUcash, you'll need to add the HOME=
> > setting to the environment file prior to launching the application.
> 
> Thanks for the help, John.  This did work without problems.  But it is
> a shame they don't put the files in the proper place in the first
> place.  It looks messy and makes me reluctant to recommend to the sort
> of innocents I have in mind.

I wonder who you mean with "they" when you say "it's a shame they don't put 
the files in the proper place in the first place". I guess you mean the 
developers. Since I'm one of them, I'll give you some background here.

In the early days, GnuCash was a program on the linux operating system. As it 
became more popular some developers started porting it to different operating 
systems, among also Windows. Technically though linux and windows are very 
different with different coding requirements, different software libraries, 
different default location conventions and so on. So I think most of the 
effort during the porting was spent in actually getting the program to run 
without crashing and less so on complying with all windows conventions. I 
think the developers doing the port did a pretty good job.

That's the history. We're now in a position with a stable windows version. The 
problem of the multitude of directories being created is a known problem. 
There is even a bugreport for it [1] . And I agree it's messy. But other than 
that it's pretty harmless.

The reason it's not solved yet is probably because GnuCash is still a 
volunteer project and all the currently active developers (including myself) 
either don't have the time right now or have other priorities in their limited 
available time.

But again, I agree this is an issue that should get fixed. If someone 
volunteers to send in a patch, I'll gladly apply it. Though this commercial 
would probably better be run on the gnucash-devel list ;)

Geert

[1] https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=503722