[GNC] GNUCash 3.x and 4.x compatibility

Tommy Trussell tommy.trussell at gmail.com
Tue Oct 13 14:43:41 EDT 2020


The Debian maintainer released GnuCash 4.2 recently, and if you don't see a
"backported" version for your version of Debian you might be able to
backport it yourself fairly easily.

OR install the Flatpak version.
The only downsides I've run into with Flatpak are:

1) You lose the ability to print reports directly (you have to export and
print reports from a PDF or HTML file).
2) You have to jump through some extra hoops to retain your custom reports.
3) Your desktop shortcuts have to change (if you use those). I have seven
active GnuCash books I use so it's especially important to me.

For item 2 I used these two lines and it has worked fine:

  $ mv ~/.var/app/org.gnucash.GnuCash/data/gnucash
~/.var/app/org.gnucash.GnuCash/data/gnucash.orig
  $ ln -s ~/.local/share/gnucash
~/.var/app/org.gnucash.GnuCash/data/gnucash

This renames the data directory Flatpak GnuCash uses to store reports (and
window positions and other info) and the next line symbolically links the
Flatpak directory to the "standard" linux directory GnuCash uses. I expect
now I should be able to keep using the same custom reports even if I later
resume using a .deb or self-compiled version of GnuCash for some reason.

On Mon, Oct 12, 2020 at 12:25 PM Adrien Monteleone <
adrien.monteleone at lusfiber.net> wrote:

> I would stick with one or the other as they are different major
> versions. You shouldn't have any issues running two different minor
> versions such as 4.0 on one machine and 4.1 on another. There might be
> exceptions in some rare cases, but the devs will let everyone know if
> that happens and which versions are affected.
>
> Compiling on Linux is not difficult but it does involve some reading and
> initial setup of the build environment. Another easy option is to use a
> recent Flatpak, but that too has some sandbox issues you may need to
> work around. (printing comes to mind, and I think there are some
> workarounds needed for using a db backend with Flatpak)
>
> Otherwise, just install the same older version on Windows.
>
> Regards,
> Adrien
>
> On 10/11/20 10:04 PM, Kevin Exton wrote:
> > Hi All,
> >
> > I normally use GNUCash 3.x on Debian 10 (Just whatever is currently in
> the
> > stable repositories to make my life easy).
> >
> > Recently I have a need to also use GNUCash on a Windows machine. Are
> there
> > compatibility issues between GNUCash 3.x and 4.x if I run them on the
> same
> > data backed up in Dropbox?
> >
> > I'm thinking maybe I will need to install a new version of GNUCash on
> > Debian. Or an old version on Windows.
> >
> > Thanks All!
> > Kevin
>
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