[GNC] how to remove both GNC 4.2 and Flathub version 4.8 so can upgrade to 4.9 on Ubuntu 20.04lts

[davidcousens49 at gmail.com]

Jeff,
You may find this page helpful to unistall the flatpak version.
https://www.systutorials.com/docs/linux/man/1-flatpak-uninstall/

How did you install GC 4.2. If you built it from source and still have the
source and build directories it was installed from theneither
$sudo ninja uninstall 
or
$sudo make uninstall 
run in the build directory in a terminal should uninstall it. 

If you installed 4.2 from the sickly life ppa you should be able to remove it
with
$sudo apt remove --auto-remove gnucash


If not it will be a manual uninstall as per the instructions here
https://code.gnucash.org/wiki/Uninstall_Gnucash_Ubuntu.
You need to be fairly careful uninstalling manually it is the method of last
resort.

Don't delete your desktop icons/shortcuts. You may need to edit them and change
the path to the gnucash executable depending on how and where you install it but
you should be able to change the path to the gnucash executable and leave the
rest of the instruction for the file to open unchanged,

Possibly the only way to get 4.9 installed is to build it from source or to use
flathub.

https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Building_On_Linux

The main problem is ensuring all the dependencies and header files for them are
installed. https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Installing_Dependencies sometimes you
will find the library has a slightly different name and occasionally there will
be a library which is assumed to be installed by default which may be missing. 

$apt-cache search <string>  is a command which can be used to locate the
specific library names and what is available on your OS version  <string> can be
a substring of the library name which identifies it eg "swig" will lsit the
swig2.0 and swig3.0 library if available.  You can generally use the most recent
versions of most libraries unless the use of a specific version is identified in
the README.dependencies file in the downloaded source files.  (I haven't updated
the dependency list since V3 so substitute the version number listed in the
README.dependencies file if it is different. I used to do that after I upgraded
to a new Linux MInt version but their version upgrade is now so good I have
never had to completely reinstall the OS since Linux Mint 19.1 so I have never
had to reinstall all the dpendencies

When you run the cmake command  in the build directoryit will generally stop
with an error message if a dependency is missing. The easiest procedure is to
load the depnendency that was missing and then rerun the cmake command until it
completes without error. Once that is done youcan run the build commands and the
install commands.

Once you get it built successfully for the first time it is usually a piece of
cake to build and install subsequent Gnucash version Keep the source directory
and the buidl directory as the uninstalling them is easiest by running 
$sudo ninja uninstall in the build directory.

David Cousens




On Mon, 2021-12-20 at 02:12 -0600, Jeff wrote:
> I currently have GNC Version 4.2 installed on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. At the 
> recommendation of a former post for info I also have 4.8 from flat-hub 
> somewhere on my system (have yet to find out where or how to remove it).
> 
> 4.2 is is in the launch bar and has desktop icons to multiple sets of 
> books.  The only way I have found to run 4.8 is in software manager and 
> have to change books manually (which 4.8 also had the nasty habit of 
> creating backup files on the desktop for some reason).
> 
> 1) How do I uninstall both versions?
> 
> 2) how do I install 4.9 (preferably without Flathub)?  I also need 
> desktop icons to launch GNC from the desktop for multiple sets of books 
> (lucky me, I am the accountant/tax man for the entire family!  I won't 
> even go into what condition I receive financial records in).
> 
> I am not opposed to building from source code but; all of my tries have 
> so far failed miserably on GNC.
> 
> It's a simple mater under Windoze but so far nothing I have tried works 
> on Ubuntu.  And yes, I need the desktop icons for each set of books as 
> the icons are linked to each individuals books across multiple drives on 
> remote servers not just mine. My memory has had to many read/write 
> cycles to keep track of who is on which server drive and file name.
>