[GNC] A repository for user-contributed files

[D.]

Dr. Kirkby,

I appreciate your enthusiasm for this idea. 

I honestly doubt you'll get many contributors. 

When I joined the Gnucash community back in 2006, one of the areas I'd hoped for improvement was in reporting, and I raised the issue in the lists. It was suggested to me at the time that the tools existed for users to contribute their own reports-- and that those reports might then get added to the project. I was directed to a guide for programming in Scheme and the Gnucash wiki pages for creating one's own custom reports. 

And that's where my dreams of contributing custom reports to gnucash died. Writing reports for gnucash in Scheme is hellaciously complicated (no offense, Derek!), and most of my energy now has been focused on how to manipulate the existing reports to do something close to my goals. 

Judging by the paucity of actual new reports (never mind fixes to existing ones, which languished for years and years until Christopher Lam came along)(thank you, Chris!!) in the Gnucash stable of reports over the years, I'd have to say my own experience is rather common. 

Far more useful, in my opinion, is for users to share their tricks for getting gnucash to do their bidding, for which pages on the wiki (such as https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Using_GnuCash) were created to allow. 

Best, 
David T. 



-------- Original Message --------
From: "Dr. David Kirkby" <drkirkby at kirkbymicrowave.co.uk>
Sent: Mon Dec 13 16:52:27 EST 2021
To: Dustin Henning <gcul209 at mynym.us>
Cc: GNU Cash User <gnucash-user at gnucash.org>
Subject: Re: [GNC] A repository for user-contributed files

On Mon, 13 Dec 2021 at 20:36, Dustin Henning <gcul209 at mynym.us> wrote:

> I don't know if one exists already or not, but assuming no, one path
> forward might be GitHub (or a competing non-Microsoft git service that
> also has a decent web interface).  I am operating under the assumption
> that some such service is free or has a reasonable free tier.  This
> would allow for multiple maintainers and the ability for people to
> submit reports from their own repositories.  It would also allow for
> resuscitation via a fork if all active maintainers stopped contributing
> around the same time.  One big drawback would likely be that GitHub
> doesn't seem very user-friendly for users that aren't in it regularly.
>

I agree about the user interface to github. There's some alternatives to
github here.

https://itsfoss.com/github-alternatives/

I don't know how you square the circle of allowing multiple people to
upload files, but avoiding rootkits and the like.

If some open-source alternative could be found, it would probably be
possible to run the code on a free AWS instance. if a script was run to

a) Make files read only
b) Strip off the execute bit

it should prevent someone over-writing files, or trying to execute their
code.

Given the size of the files, it should be possible for multiple people to
make backups on a regular basis. So if the maintainer drops dead, no data
is lost.

Dave
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