Cross Platform, Cross Version

[Colin Law]

On 12 July 2015 at 21:39, David Carlson <david.carlson.417 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 7/12/2015 11:52 AM, sajan at noppix.com wrote:
>> I've just started a new business and want to use GnuCash for all
>> accounting and do it myself, outsourcing my single employee payroll to
>> someone else.  I'm primarily a Linux user and was thinking about
>> syncing the company files to our file server and opening them up from
>> different laptops and computers.  I'm wondering will I encounter any
>> issues if one laptop opens up the company files with GNUCash version
>> XXX, make some changes, save.  Then I open it up on a different
>> computer with a slightly different version of GNUCash?
>>
>> Reason I ask is because I have a mix of laptops and computers, some
>> running Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, some running Ubuntu 15.04.  Plus, I if I
>> don't get my way, I might have a single Windows 7 computer as well.
>> All of these will have different versions of GNUCash, but will open
>> the same set of files off the file server.
>>
>> Let me know if this is a giant disaster waiting to happen, or if I
>> should be okay.
>>
> ...
> The disaster, as you no doubt already suspect, is having the data file
> open on more than one computer at a time.  All too often I get
> interrupted and I fail to close the file when I get up to refill my
> coffee cup.

If there is only one file, being accessed on a server over the
network, then this should not cause a disaster as another user trying
to open the file will get the locked message.  If there are multiple
copies of the file shared using Dropbox or similar then such disasters
can easily occur.

Colin