GnuCash system files and folders

David T. sunfish62 at yahoo.com
Fri Nov 25 23:06:54 EST 2016


Thanks, John for the clear answer.

Personally, I wonder how difficult it would be to have the version number changed to match the program release? Then it would be clear to the user that this file belongs to the version they are using, rather than an earlier one.

If it really isn’t possible to manage that, then I think it would suffice to document somewhere (if it isn’t already) what the reports file number should be for a given GnuCash release. Having a different numbering system for the reports file doesn’t make more sense than having a reports file denominated in the originating GnuCash version.

David

> On Nov 26, 2016, at 12:23 AM, John Ralls <jralls at ceridwen.us> wrote:
> 
> 
>> On Nov 24, 2016, at 10:37 PM, David T. via gnucash-user <gnucash-user at gnucash.org <mailto:gnucash-user at gnucash.org>> wrote:
>> 
>> Hello,
>> 
>> I am a longtime user of the program, working with GC2.6.14 on Mac OS X 10.11.6. I am looking at the directory structure on my Mac, and I see a lot of different GnuCash-related files and folders. I wonder whether they are all necessary, and want to check with the community to verify before I cause myself trouble.
>> 
>> In /Library, I have:
>> 
>> lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  44 Sep 18  2012 Gnucash-2.4 -> /Applications/Gnucash.app/Contents/Resources
>> lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  51 May 29  2013 Gnucash-2.5 -> /Users/david/Desktop/Gnucash.app/Contents/Resources
>> lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  57 May 25  2013 Gnucash-2.5.Save -> /Users/david/Desktop/Gnucash-2.5.1.app/Contents/Resources
>> 
>> I believe I can safely delete these links, since I am not using 2.4 or 2.5 at this time.
>> 
>> In my home folder, I have a “.gnucash” folder, which contains numerous files and folders, the most recent of which dates from February 2013. I believe this can also be deleted, as I believe that whatever information contained here is now stored in ~/Library/Application Support/Gnucash.
>> 
>> Finally, within ~/Library/Application Support/Gnucash, I have the following files:
>> 
>> -rw-r--r--  1 david  502  185457 Dec  3  2010 saved-reports-2.0
>> -rw-r--r--@ 1 david  502  172919 Nov 19 10:02 saved-reports-2.4
>> -rw-r--r--  1 david  502  171840 Nov 19 10:02 saved-reports-2.4-backup
>> 
>> As you see, saved-reports-2.4 appears to be active (along with its backup). Can I delete saved-reports-2.0, and is there some way to have the saved reports file version number match the version I am currently using (or not use one at all)?
> 
> David,
> 
> Yes, you can remove all of the files you suggest.
> 
> No,"`saved-reports-2.4" is hard-coded into the program and is changed only when the format of the file changes. That last happened during the 2.4 development cycle and is happening again in the current one [1]. We're planning to change the version number to 2.8, so your question is very timely indeed. Perhaps it would make more sense to decouple the version of this file from the GnuCash release number and just use a plain integer going forward: The coming version would be saved-reports-3, the next time we need to change it it would be saved-reports-4, and so on. Would you prefer that?
> 
> Regards,
> John Ralls
> 
> [1] https://github.com/Gnucash/gnucash/pull/107 <https://github.com/Gnucash/gnucash/pull/107>
> 
> 
> 



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