[GNC] Upgrade Path from version 2.6.16 on MacOS High Sierra (10.13.6) and beyond

[Michael Hendry]

> On 28 Jan 2019, at 16:15, John Ralls <jralls at ceridwen.us> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
>> On Jan 28, 2019, at 3:47 AM, Adrien Monteleone <adrien.monteleone at lusfiber.net> wrote:
>> 
>> A developer could chime in but my recollection from when this arose last year or so is, “no.” If it were critical to run a 32-bit version, you’ll need a VM running an older version of MacOS. (note that is against the Apple TOS)
> 
> If there's sufficient demand this summer I might be persuaded to build a 64-bit 2.6.21 bundle, but I'd really prefer people to move to GnuCash 3 if for no other reason than that Gtk2 isn't getting much attention as Apple changes APIs. 
> 
> It used to be against Apple's license to run MacOS X in a VM, but they removed that restriction in 10.7. VMWare Fusion and Parallels both work quite well. I have a large collection of MacOS VMs and build the GnuCash MacOS bundles on a 10.9 VM to ensure that it will work for users who haven't been updating their OS.
> 
> Regards,
> John Ralls
> 

Thanks to John, Adrien and David T for all of their comments.

My iMac is a 64-bit machine, so there will be no problem in running 64-bit software. The “file” command tells me that Gnucash-bin is a "Mach-O executable i386” file, i.e. 32-bit, so it won’t be useable when MacOS goes 64-bit only.

My plan is therefore:

1. Download and install 2.6.21 - I’m assuming from what John said above that the only version currently available as a DMG is 32-bit.

2. Use this to open experimental copies of current .gnucash files to ensure nothing unexpected turns up.

3. Run a month or so in parallel using 2.6.16 and 2.6.21 on separate sets of .gnucash files before abandoning 2.6.16.

4. Download and install 3.4 (64-bit) and repeat 1, 2 and 3.


Alternatively, I could run through the staged upgrade in Ubuntu 18.04 on a VM on my Mac, which would isolate my live data from accidental damage.


Further questions:

1. What happens to existing reports when a new version is installed? e.g. are they overwritten or preserved by renaming?

2. Would it be safe to assume that a successful upgrade on Ubuntu would mean there wouldn't be a problem on MacOS? (there seems to be a lot of traffic on the the list about 3.4 MacOS crashing).

Michael