[GNC] Symbolic links (MacOSX)

[Peter S. Shenkin]

Thanks. My symlink works; I can cd into the tree via the symlink in a
terminal session, open files in the through it, etc.

Thanks for your response anyway. I'm just going to keep using Gnucash from
the copy I made.

-P.

On Sun, Jul 24, 2022 at 11:55 AM john <jralls at ceridwen.us> wrote:

>
>
> > On Jul 23, 2022, at 10:38 AM, Peter S. Shenkin <shenkin at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > Hi,
> >
> > I'm getting back to gnucash after a long hiatus. I'm also starting up
> using
> > Gnucash on a different computer. So I copied the Gnucash directory to
> > ~/Documents/work/Foo/ on the new computer. (The name Foo was changed to
> > protect the innocent. Or is it the guilty?)
> >
> > Gnucash had been in ~/work/Foo on the old computer, so set up a symbolic
> > link in ~/work called Foo pointing to ~/Documents/work/Foo. To my
> surprise,
> > I got a msg that Gnucash couldn't parse the URL, and another, after
> > dismissing that dialog, that Gnucash could not open the file.
> >
> > Eventually, as kind of a Hail-Mary pass, I replaced the symlink with an
> > actual copy (cp -pR) of the Foo directory from ~/Documents/work to
> ~/work,
> > and then Gnucash could read it.
> >
> > This struck me as extremely bizarre. I have two questions.
> >
> >   - Can Gnucash really not read through symlinks on MacOS?
> >      - Note that my Privacy settings allow Gnucash to read the
> ~/Documents
> >      directory, to which the symlink points.
> >      - In retrospect, I guess I should have tried using a MacOS "alias"
> >      instead of a symlink, but I don't know if that would have worked
> > any better.
> >      - There is nothing in Privacy to specify that Gnucash can read ~ or
> >      ~/work, but apparently this is not needed.
> >   - Suppose I now want to tell Gnucash to use the data in
> >   ~/Documents/Foo/Gnucash. Is there a way for me to do this without
> losing my
> >   history? (Or my sanity?)
>
> I just tested a regular symlink and an alias. GnuCash had no trouble
> opening a file through the symlink using File/Open or subsequently
> reopening the file on launch. Perhaps you misspelled something when you
> made the symlink.
>
> Navigating through macOS alias files requires opening files through
> CFURL.  boost::filesystem doesn't know how to do that so neither does
> GnuCash. FWIW bash and zsh don't either.
>
> GnuCash has access to Documents, Downloads, Desktop, and Network drives in
> System Settings>Privacy & Security>Files and Folders (I'm running macOS 13
> developer beta on this mac). It does not have full disk access.
>
> I suppose that the history you have in mind is the list of most recently
> used files at the bottom of the File menu. The simplest way to migrate to
> the new directory is to use File>Open  to open each in turn ***bottom to
> top***.
>
> Regards,
> John Rals
>
>