[GNC] Old-New user with an upgrade problem

[Adrien Monteleone]

The 'Kept back' list is something to focus on.

   `sudo apt-get --with-new-pkgs upgrade`

Should pull those in, *and* keep them as 'auto-installed'.

If you install them one at a time, they will be marked as 'manually 
installed' which could be problematic later.

Since you went through two upgrades (from Jessie to Stretch to Buster) 
it would be a good idea to get all package issues resolved before too long.

There are several commands and tools you can use to trace why packages 
are held, exactly what versions are installed, as well as reverse 
dependencies so you can see what can safely be removed if it is no 
longer needed. ('autoremove' doesn't catch everything) But all of that 
is far beyond the scope of this list. (it is a game of whack-a-mole anyway)

And yes, if you downloaded the .deb of GnuCash originally, I'd remove 
it, and re-install.

You have 3 options for re-install:

1. 3.4 from the standard Buster repo
2. Follow that Wiki link I gave earlier and use the buster-backports 
repo to get 3.10
3. Install Flatpak and then install GnuCash 4.1

The 3rd option allows you to stay current with GnuCash but stay on 
Buster as long as it is officially supported.

The 2nd option allegedly does this too, but it is 3 versions behind and 
it is unknown if additional backports will be made after 3.10.

There is nothing wrong with the first option, but there have been seven 
versions issued since 3.4 in the 3.x series, and two in the 4.x series. 
It is quite old (nearly 2 years) and a few hundred or more bugs have 
been squashed since then along with many improvements in reports.

The only quirk to Flatpak that I'm aware of is that there are some 
special configuration considerations if you are using one of the 
database backends, as well as getting GnuCash to print to a physical 
printer. (both doable, but they won't work out of the box) See the Wiki 
for more info on getting the Flatpak version and any side issues.


Regards,
Adrien

On 8/22/20 1:39 AM, John Angelico wrote:
> Thanks again Adrien.
> 
> You are correct, I did upgrade from Jessie.
> 
> I have just checked my own update log, which I save out of the terminal
> session.
> 
> It shows a lot which has been held back, and I also ran autoremove to clear
> out a lot of unused stuff. There were plenty of python items there but I
> didn't see python-GnuCash or python3-GnuCash.
> 
> Kept back:
>    python-dbus.mainloop.pyqt5
>    python-pyqt5 python-qt4 python-sip python3 python3-apt python3-brlapi
>    python3-cairo python3-cups python3-dbus python3-dbus.mainloop.pyqt5
>    python3-gi python3-gi-cairo python3-minimal python3-pil python3-pycurl
>    python3-pyqt5 python3-renderpm python3-reportlab python3-reportlab-accel
>    python3-sip python3-smbc python3-uno
> 
> IIRC, I installed 2.6 from a separate download rather than through the
> repos. I wonder if I should just completely uninstall GnuCash and start
> afresh?
>