[GNC] Gnucash logs

[Chris Good]

-----Original Message-----
From: David T. <sunfish62 at yahoo.com> 
Sent: Wednesday, 29 April 2020 4:11 PM
To: Chris Good <goodchris96 at gmail.com>; 'David H' <hellvee at gmail.com>
Cc: 'Gnucash Users' <gnucash-user at gnucash.org>
Subject: Re: [GNC] Gnucash logs

If the setting were per book and user-configurable, then a user could choose to set each data file to use a different set of folders, by changing the file default from "logs" to "logs-file1"

Does the Attachments functionality provide a blueprint for how this could work for backups and logs? It seems to me that there is a setting somewhere that allows the user to point to a particular folder for external file association (although my attempts at locating that setting have failed).

But your point about the logs and backups having different filenames is apt as well.

David T.

On 4/29/2020 8:55 AM, Chris Good wrote:

> From: David H <hellvee at gmail.com>
> Sent: Wednesday, 29 April 2020 12:49 PM
> To: Chris Good <goodchris96 at gmail.com>
> Cc: Gnucash Users <gnucash-user at gnucash.org>
> Subject: Re: [GNC] Gnucash logs
>
>   
>
> Chris,
>
>   
>
> How would you see this working with my 2 data files that I have in the same gnucash folder ???  Would the subdirectory(ies) include the name of the data file to clearly identify them or would all log/backup files be lumped in together in a single subdirectory ?  When I save my gnucash file under another name using save as would it create the required subdirectories for the new data file if they are separate subdirectories ?
>
>   
>
> My own situation is that I've set the log files to be deleted after 30 days which seems to work on Mac Catalina.  My data files are in a dedicated folder in my Documents folder and I must confess that I have NEVER had a need to go looking for backup files or log files since starting with Gnucash in 2010.
>
>   
>
> Cheers David Halverson.
>
>   
>
> On Wed, 29 Apr 2020 at 11:48, Chris Good <goodchris96 at gmail.com <mailto:goodchris96 at gmail.com> > wrote:
>
> -------- Original Message --------
> From: Michael or Penny Novack <stepbystepfarm at comcast.net 
> <mailto:stepbystepfarm at comcast.net> >
> Sent: Tue Apr 28 22:11:04 GMT+05:30 2020
> To: "D." <sunfish62 at yahoo.com <mailto:sunfish62 at yahoo.com> >
> Cc: Gnucash Users <gnucash-user at gnucash.org 
> <mailto:gnucash-user at gnucash.org> >
> Subject: Re: [GNC] Gnucash logs
>
> On 4/27/2020 10:50 PM, D. wrote:
>> Michael,
>>
>> I take your point; we users will often create duplicated file names 
>> for
> different content. I believe that many users only keep one set of 
> books. I don't have any statistics on general GnuCash usage to be able 
> to say whether more users have one file or many.
>> However, given that operating systems prevent identical file names to 
>> coexist in a folder, it would seem to me that there is a simple 
>> remedy to overlapping log files: per book log folder settings. In 
>> your case, business1financials/ledger.gnucash would use 
>> business1financials/logs and organization1financials/ledger.gnucash 
>> would use organization1financials/logs
>>
>> Problem solved.
>>
> Yes, but that is solving the problem by a different method (not 
> writing the log files to a dedicated directory for all log files but 
> writing them into a subdirectory of the directory containing the data file).
> Would be easy for gnucash when starting to check for the existence of 
> this subdirectory, if not there, create it. Much as it checks for the 
> existence of a lock file.
>
> Had THAT been suggested you would not have seen an objection from me.
> But about "almost all users have only one set of books" I have to laugh.
> If all those rare situations never existed, designing/writing software 
> would be a snap. Software solution have to ALWAYS work. A commonly 
> quoted rule of rule of thumb, 80% of the design/write time will be 
> handling just 20% of the cases, but in my experience, 50% of the time 
> will be handling those that are 1% or less.
>
> Michael
>
> Hi,
>
> I like the idea of putting logs in a 'log' subdirectory of the data 
> file folder and also putting the backups in a 'backup' subdirectory of 
> the data file folder. GnuCash would create these on startup if needed.
>
> If I could get general approval in principle, I could even start work on it.
>
> Regards, Chris Good
>
> _______________________________________________
>
>
>
> Hi David H,
>
>   
>
> The backup filenames and log filenames already include the book name and I see no reason to change that.
>
> People could still have multiple books in the same directory, although I suggest best practice is to put each book’s data file in a separate directory.
>
>   
>
> Regards, Chris Good
>

Hi David T,

Adding  new options and a directory selection dialog seems like a lot of extra work, extra support complication and   very little gain over putting each book data in its own directory, with backups and logs in subdirectories.
Some people have enough trouble finding their data files, without enabling them to put their backups and logs somewhere unrelated to the data file.

Someone else seemed to suggest it would be a good idea to put logs from different books together in a single directory. I cannot think of a good reason for that and think that will just cause confusion.

My 0.2c.

Regards, Chris Good