[GNC] Is there a way to handle same-named GnuCash files sensibly?

[Derek Atkins]

Back in antiquity, GnuCash would encode the full path of the data file
into the metadata file, but that meant that if you moved the data file in
any way, GnuCash would lose track of the metadata belonging to it...

-derek

On Wed, May 4, 2022 4:02 pm, Chris Green wrote:
> On Wed, May 04, 2022 at 09:26:51PM +0200, Geert Janssens wrote:
>> Op dinsdag 3 mei 2022 18:37:20 CEST schreef Chris Green:
>> > GnuCash names files in ~/.local/share/gnucash/books according to the
>> > filename of the GnuCash data file.  This is a bit of a problem for me
>> > because I expect to be able to have multiple GnuCash data files with
>> > the same name in different places.
>> >
>> In theory gnucash should be able to handle this. If the file name
>> already exists in the books
>> directory, gnucash will create the new file in there with a number
>> appended to the name. To
>> find the proper file in book matching the building.gnucash file you just
>> opened, it uses a
>> unique book guid that's stored inside each of the files in the books
>> directory. I don't know
>> however how these unique id's are generated or how their uniqueness is
>> guaranteed. So
>> depending on how you make new gnucash files for each year, this may or
>> may not work.
>>
> Yes, I noticed too that there a files with a number added to the base
> name, e.g.:-
>
>     building.gnucash.gcm
>     building.gnucash_2.gcm
>
> ... but I'm not sure that it's a perfect system.
>
> I have reverted to having the year as part of the file name and a
> wrapper script that finds the data file corresponding to the year
> directory I'm in.
>
> I.e. if I'm in directory /home/chris/pcc/2021 and I run the wrapper
> script 'gnc' it will run gnucash with data file general2021.gnucash.
> It seems pretty much OK so far and saves a lot of typing of long names.
>
>
> --
> Chris Green
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-- 
       Derek Atkins                 617-623-3745
       derek at ihtfp.com             www.ihtfp.com
       Computer and Internet Security Consultant