[GNC] Downgrading to 2.6.21

Sun Apr 7 15:41:00 EDT 2019

I’m not sure how it works on Windows, but on my Mac, when I attempt to open certain files in my Dropbox folder (I am using the DropBox add-in that maps my DropBox to a folder in my system), I see a huge character string in the title bar, with a long repeating sequence of “../“ 

This doesn’t display in every application, just some. But it may be that what appears to you to be a short path name may in fact be much longer, due to hidden idiosyncrasies in DropBox.

David

> On Apr 7, 2019, at 11:20 PM, Greg Feneis <mfeneis at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Some more testing on the issue where 3.5 seems to want a shorter path than
> 2.6.x did:
> 
> Just now, I exited Dropbox to see if that had something to do with it, but
> pretty much the same error for all three path variations, what worked
> historically with 2.6.x, no ampersand but some folder names used spaces,
> and no ampersand + no spaces.  It seemed purely to do with length, but it
> doesn't seem to be about total characters.
> 
> With Dropbox back on, here are some more tests:
> 
> C:\Dropbox\MyDocs\ThoroughCandD\GnuCash\test.gnucash   (52 chars) Success!
> 
> C:\Dropbox\MyDocs\ThoroughCandD\GnuCash\GnuCashFiles\test.gnucash  (65
> chars) Failure!
> 
> So I shortened the name of the last folder from GnuCashFiles down to G and
> still got the same problem
> C:\Dropbox\MyDocs\ThoroughCandD\GnuCash\G\test.gnucash  (54 chars) Failure!
> 
> So I shortened the name of the previous folder from GnuCash down to GnuCa,
> and it also failed even though it was 52 chars, the character count that
> seemed to work previously.  Also the error message for this is slightly
> different.
> "You attempted to save in [gibberish]\Users\Greg\AppData\Roaming\GnuCash or
> a subdirectory thereof. This is not allowed as GnuCash reserves that
> directory for internal use....Please try again in a different directory.
> (close)."  See screen shot here
> https://www.dropbox.com/s/pa3gdy6c2w21x6u/2019-04-07_9-30-31.jpg?dl=0
> This was the actual attempted path:
> 
> C:\Dropbox\MyDocs\ThoroughCandD\GnuCa\G\test.gnucash   (52 chars) Failure!
> although same char count
> 
> 
> More testing:
> 
> C:\Dropbox\MyDocs\ThoroughCandD\G\G\test.gnucash   (48 chars)  Failure!
> C:\Dropbox\MyDocs\ThoroughCand\G\G\test.gnucash (47 chars) Failure!
> C:\Dropbox\MyDocs\ThoroughCan\G\G\test.gnucash (46 chars) Success!
> 
> 
> If I reduce the number of folders in the path, does the max character count
> go up?
> 
> C:\Dropbox\MyDocs\ThoroughCandD\G\test.gnucash   (46 chars) Success!
> C:\Dropbox\MyDocs\ThoroughCandD\Gnu\test.gnucash (48 chars) Success!
> C:\Dropbox\MyDocs\ThoroughCandD\GnuCash\test.gnucash (52 chars) Success!
> (confirming results from beginning of this email)
> C:\Dropbox\MyDocs\ThoroughCandD\GnuCashTestLongerPath\test.gnucash (66
> chars) Success!
> C:\Dropbox\MyDocs\ThoroughCandD\GnuCashTestLongerPathAndEvenLongerPath\test.gnucash
> (83 chars) Success!
> C:\Dropbox\MyDocs\ThoroughCandD\GnuCashTestLongerPathAndEvenLongerPathAndEvenLongerPath\test.gnucash
> (100
> chars) Success!
> C:\Dropbox\MyDocs\ThoroughCandDTestEvenLongerPathEvenLongerPathSuperLongPath\GnuCashTestLongerPathAndEvenLongerPathAndEvenLongerPath\test.gnucash
> (145 chars) Success!
> 
> 
> I'm not going to test to failure on this folder count, but it sure looks
> like something about GnuCash 3.5 limits the path based on folder count and
> path character count.  If I use a 5 folder path, max path character count
> is 46.  If I used a 4 folder path, I've tested up to 145 characters.
> 
> Hope this helps.
> 
> Kind regards,
> 
> Greg
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Sun, Apr 7, 2019 at 8:32 AM Greg Feneis <mfeneis at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> Hi John,
>> 
>> The path length issue was with 3.5 on Win 7-64.  Previously used 2.6.x to
>> save to the same location without trouble.
>> 
>> The path that 3.5 failed to write to is:
>> 
>> C:\Dropbox\My Docs\Thorough C & D\GnuCash\GnuCash
>> Files\(VerboseFileNameProbably30chars.gnucash)
>> 
>> 
>> The last successful saves to this directory was by GnuCash 2.6.21, and was:
>> 
>> C:\Dropbox\My Docs\Thorough C & D\GnuCash\GnuCash
>> Files\AfterImporting2018ThroughQ4.gnucash.20190401075914.log  (4/1/2019
>> 8:01AM)
>> 
>> C:\Dropbox\My Docs\Thorough C & D\GnuCash\GnuCash Files\AfterImporting2018ThroughQ4.gnucash
>> (4/1/2019 7:59AM)
>> 
>> 
>> Since I suspected it was a path length issue, I tried saving the file name
>> test.gnucash in the same location, but got the same error.  So I went one
>> folder back and tried to save again and it failed the same way.  I kept
>> shortening the path folder by folder like this until it did save, which was
>> as follows:
>> 
>> C:\Dropbox\My Docs\Thorough C & D\test.gnucash
>> 
>> 
>> Next, I copied the original folders so I could make a test path exactly
>> like the path that causes the error, but with no ampersand, and I still get
>> the the same problem.
>> 
>> C:\Dropbox\My Docs\Thorough C and D\GnuCash\GnuCash Files\         fails
>> just like   C:\Dropbox\My Docs\Thorough C & D\GnuCash\GnuCash Files\
>> 
>> 
>> A screen shot of the error
>> https://www.dropbox.com/s/gd8rlgj1kvv0ysn/2019-04-05_18-37-52.png?dl=0
>> 
>> 
>> Next, I copied the original folder so I could make a test path exactly
>> like the path that causes the error, but with no spaces in the folder names
>> and no ampersand, and I still get the same problem.  *However*, this
>> time, when gnucash tried to display the path in the error message, it got
>> some of it right.
>> 
>> A screen shot of that is here:
>> https://www.dropbox.com/s/e3p0agpdlkmzia4/2019-04-05_18-52-26.png?dl=0
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Kind regards,
>> 
>> Greg
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On Sat, Apr 6, 2019 at 10:14 PM John Ralls <jralls at ceridwen.us> wrote:
>> 
>>> That's interesting. What is the path that's causing trouble with 3.5, and
>>> please remind me what OS you're using.
>>> 
>>> Regards,
>>> John Ralls
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> On Apr 6, 2019, at 10:04 PM, Greg Feneis <mfeneis at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> There's a problem with 3.5 where it won't save to the usual location
>>> that I
>>>> have saved the file to when I was using 2.6.x  For some reason 3.5 has a
>>>> problem with path length.  I never had a problem with 2.6.21, I just
>>>> thought I should keep up to the latest in case I wanted to ask for help
>>>> with it.  But since it's going to give me trouble, I'll just go back to
>>>> 2.6.21, so long as it will work with the file that was previously saved
>>> by
>>>> 3.5.
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> Kind regards,
>>>> 
>>>> Greg Feneis <http://www.linkedin.com/in/electromechanical>
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> On Sat, Apr 6, 2019 at 7:09 PM Fross, Michael <michael at fross.org>
>>> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> If you don't mind my asking, why are you downgrading?  What have you
>>> found
>>>>> that you prefer in 2.6.21?
>>>>> 
>>>>> Michael
>>>>> 
>>>>> On Sat, Apr 6, 2019 at 1:26 PM Greg Feneis <mfeneis at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>>> Hi,
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> I've done some work in 3.5 and I'm considering downgrading to 2.6.21.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Can 2.6.21 work with the xml .gnucash file once it was changed and
>>> saved
>>>>>> by
>>>>>> 3.5?
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Kind regards,
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Greg
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>>>>> 
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