Installing V4.6.5 over 4.1 AppData questions

[Geert Janssens]

Hi Rose,

I'm afraid the version numbers you use make no sense at all. There is no gnucash version 4.6.4 
or 4.6.5, nor a gnucash version 4.1. At least none as released by the gnucash developers 
themselves.

The most recent version of gnucash is 2.6.5, which I presume is what you mean. I have no idea 
which version you refer to by '4.1' though. Perhaps you meant 2.4.x ?

On Monday 16 February 2015 12:56:19 Rose wrote:
> I did a test run of installing V4.6.4 on the Win 8.1 laptop in Dec
> 2014 then discovered recently it wasn't a desirable version. There
> was no previous Gnucash installed on this laptop.
> In preparation I had copied the customized AppData/Gnucash/containing
> the 4.1 folders and a copy of the actual account files
> In Dec. I did not edit the environmental file within the 4.6.4 version

If you did not edit the environment file, that means gnucash will have ignored the contents of 
your AppData/Gnucash folder and its subfolders.

Instead it will have recreated the required set of folders directly under your home folder (c:
\users\<your-name>, for example c:\users\rose)

> Yesterday I installed V4.6.5 over top of v4.6.4 which it uninstalled
> Edited the environment file within the program folder etc/environment
> to point to the AppData/Gnucash folder before opening the software.

I presume you mean you have added the line
HOME={Appdata}/Gnucash
to the environment file ?

That means you indeed now tell gnucash again to look for its metadata in AppData/Gnucash 
and its subfolders.

> The environment file does not contain quite the same text as the 4.1
> file and it appears that an AppData/.qnucash folder was created,
> likely at the first install. It contains the actual gnucash books
> .gcm file for the accounts.

I'm not sure how a .gnucash folder was created in AppData. To my knowledge gnucash attempts 
to create such a folder by default in your home directory as explained above. Perhaps Windows 
8.1 intercepts this and writes it to the AppData directory instead ?

A sidenote - I couldn't deduce if you got this from what you wrote: .gcm file in .gnucash/books is 
*not* your gnucash data file. 'gcm' is short for "[g]nu[c]ash [m]etadata" and this file only keeps 
track of the state of your open windows, open reports, column widths and so on. Your real data 
is stored in a file which usually has the extension '.gnucash'. Where this file is located on your 
computers is impossible to tell from here. It is stored where you chose to save it when it was 
first created (assuming you didn't deliberately moved it afterwards).

> So I have .qnucash and my own created folder Gnucash in the AppData
> AND the environment file pointing to the HOME Appdata/Gnucash
> I'm not entirely sure that the my entered  path is being referenced
> since there now are two in the last two lines of the environment
> contents
If you added
HOME={Appdata}/Gnucash
to your environment file, then your own created Gnucash folder is what should be used. The 
other one is left from your trial runs with gnucash 2.6.4 and can in principle be removed. If you 
saved some report presets while in gnucash 2.6.4, these presets will be in the other .gnucash 
folder though. It's not trivial to recover these into your own created Gnucash folder. The easiest 
way is to redo them from within gnucash in this case.

> This environment file is not quite the same as 4.1.
> When I open the account the contents of the data appears as a replica
> of content viewed  within 4.1 on the Win 7 desktop
> 
That's good. The way gnucash locates your actual data file is unrelated to the environment file. 
So this is what I'd expect if you copied over your data file from Windows 7 to Windws 8.1.

> When I install 4.6.5 into the Win 7 desktop it is going to
> automatically create the AppData/.gnucash file and I presume pick up
> the active book.
As said before I'd expect the automatically created .gnucash folder in your home folder instead 
of in AppData. Unless Windows 7 also "automagically" intercepts this and chooses to write it in 
AppData instead. I don't have Windows 7 nor Windows 8.1 to test this.

> My Questions are:
> #1.In that environment file for 4.6.5 is the edit procedure the same
> routine BEFORE opening 4.6.5 as it was for version 4.1?

Yes

> The last line is:
> XDG_DATA_DIRS={GNC_HOME}
> /share;{XDG_DATA_DIRS};/usr/local/share;/share (There is a
> gtkfilechooser.ini  within AppData/Local/gtk-2.0) I have inserted as
> the last line on the Win 8.1 install:
> HOME={Appdata}/Gnucash
> This configuration appears to be working correctly in 8.1 but I'm not
> totally sure since both AppData folders (.gnucash and Roaming/Gnucash)
> still exist.

It should work like that.

> Also V4.1 has many extra folders with nothing in them in that
> AppData/Gnucash folder of mine therefore I wonder if I need that
> construct at all with 4.6.5.
> 
You do if you want gnucash to find your pre-existing metadata. If you skip this step, gnucash will 
create a new .gnucash folder in your home folder (or AppData according to your experience on 
Windows 8.1).

> Question 2: Therefore the edit of the environment file is not needed
> after installing 4.6.5 and I can remove my original user-created
> subfolder in AppData?

If you remove your original user-created subfolder in AppData, you will loose your metadata. 
How "bad" that is depends on what you did so far.

Did you save report presets (that is used the save/save as... buttons to store reports you 
frequently use) ? If you remove your user-created subfolder these will be gone.
When you start gnucash: do you have several tabs/windows open (like frequently uses registers, 
some reports that are always open,...)?  If you remove your user-created subfolder these will be 
gone.

If you wish to keep this information you should reinsert the line in your environment file.

Geert