Aw: Re: sequential use of Gnucash on multiple computers

[Geert Janssens]

On Monday 20 May 2013 12:16:14 Peter von Kaehne wrote:
>    Sorry for top posting!
> 
>    Thanks to all, this is really helpful. Steven - I did not know about
>    saving data uncomp[ressed. This makes indeed a huge difference in a
>    variety of ways.
> 
>    Just to clarify - if two edits  happen on the same file and get merged
>    - this does not cause any grief? This was the main concern I had. Are
>    transactions numbered in any form?

There is no transaction numbering that will be useful or harmful in this 
context.

Transactions are identified by unique identifiers (guids). So even if you 
entered the same transaction on both pc's there is very little chance they 
would have the same guid (which is randomly generated). Also the timestamps of 
the two transactions would be different.

Additionally, svn doesn't know the gnucash data format so it has no way to 
check if transactions should be the same or not.

It just sees two text files that both have changed in a different way compared 
to a common ancestor file. If the changes don't conflict (on the text file 
level!), they will be merged without issues and your new file will contain 
both.

But I'd expect concurrent changes on different PC's to conflict more often 
than not from a pure text point of view, even though you may have entered two 
totally unrelated transactions in the two PCs.

As a result, using svn will not provide you asynchronous use of your gnucash 
file on two separate PCs. IMO you should synchronize before/after each use on 
either PC.

Geert