[GNC] v3.8

[David Carlson]

Finbar,

Each release announcement is accompanied by a list of fixes and a list of
remaining bugs that the developers believe may be important to some users.
Those lists are best estimates and more issues may appear when the release
reaches a wider audience.

It is then up to the user to estimate and compare the risk of adopting that
release or waiting for the next release, not knowing whether his or her
'showstopper' bug will be fixed by then.  Most 'bugs' can be worked around
somehow, but is that ok for you?

The developers also try to keep a path open for users to revert to an older
release if they have a problem with the current release.  This last release
illustrates how difficult that can be when circumstances outside of their
control get in the way, as the situation with AQBanking in Germany made
both the new and the old releases fail in one way or another.

David Carlson

On Wed, Jan 1, 2020 at 3:46 PM David Cousens <davidcousens at bigpond.com>
wrote:

> Finbar,
>
> GnuCash is not generally altered between the stable releases unless you
> are using the "master" or "maint" branches from
> the Github repository to build GnuCash.
>
> If you are using the release tarball or a release version from the website
> or made available via a Linux distribution it
> will not change until the next release.  The minor release e.g.
> 3.0->3.1->3.2->3.3->3.4->... are usually bug fixes. The
> major bugs which are show stoppers if any are likely to be fixed in the
> first minor release after the major,i.e. 3.0
> release but they are hopefully found in prerelease testing. The bug fixes
> are unlikely to affect the core functionality
> and are mainly convenience features.  The major release e.g 2.x.y->3.0 are
> often where major changes have been made in
> the code and unforseen bugs might be introduced. This is perhaps where a
> less confident user should delay going to the
> new version. With the 2.x.y->3.0 transition by the release of v3.2 Gnucash
> was pretty well usable by the majority of
> users. GnuCash is generally sufficiently flexible in its approach that a
> workaround any problem is likely to be
> available.
>
> I have used each version in the V3.x series within a day or two of its
> release and have never encountered any major
> functionality problems in the accounting core of GnuCash.  I have an
> accounting background and some programming
> experience which gives me the confidence I can survive any problems. I
> also backup my data files before installing a new
> release and mark them with the release they pertain to so I can go back if
> necessary but I have never had to do so.
> Occasionally there are problems you have to work around with display and
> reports etc and occasionally problems where
> changes in the user file locations occurred  but these are generally
> resolved within a few days with either a workaround
> or a patched release.  GnuCash has a unit testing program in place which
> is designed to detect any major bugs affecting
> the core accounting functionality which helps to minimize major bugs even
> on a 2->3 transition.
>
> I think it is hard to define at which point a minor release version is
> stable enough for all users and there is no way
> the developers can absolutely guarantee that that is the case. If you are
> a business user and your livelihood depends on
> your bookkeeping you are going to be less tolerant of minor bugs which
> interfere with your workflow but not the core
> accounting.  I'm retired so my accounting is optional in many ways so if
> it stuffs up I can afford the time to go back
> and sort it out. The nature of the queries and the replies in the User
> mailing list is often the best indicator. When
> they drop off in frequency and users problems are being resolved quickly
> and most relate to cosmetic features is usually
> the point where a new release is usable by a majority of the user base.
>
>
>
> On Wed, 2020-01-01 at 12:30 +0100, Finbar Mahon wrote:
> > I very much appreciate, and depend a lot on, Gnucash. But could I make a
> > small recommendation?
> >
> > When a new version is launched would it be possible to announce when It
> > works for 'ordinary' users?
> >
> > I have no trouble waiting until it is 'clean'
> >
> > HYN 2020 to all.
> >
> > Finbar
> >
> > On 01/01/2020 00:34, David Cousens via gnucash-user wrote:
> > > It should but you will have to install all the dependencies and their
> > > development headers to build successfully. There is a breakout page
> from the
> > > building instruction which gives you the dependencies to install.
> (There are
> > > occasionally some that are not covered as it depends on what the
> particular
> > > Linux distribution installs as standard and what libraries have been
> > > installed with other software but it is now pretty complete).
> > >
> > > When you run cmake, it will stop with an error if anything is missing.
> > > Identify the missing dependency or come back to the list, install it
> and
> > > rerun cmake until it completes with out error. Library names can
> sometimes
> > > vary slightly between distributions to complicate matters (usually
> addition
> > > of a version number or "lib" in front
> > >
> > > apt-cache search <string> is a good way to find libraries with a
> slightly
> > > different package name.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > -----
> > > David Cousens
> > > --
> > > Sent from:
> http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/GnuCash-User-f1415819.html
> > > _______________________________________________
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> --
> Dr David R Cousens
> B.Sc, M.Prof. Acc., Ph.D., G.C.Ed
>
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-- 
David Carlson