[GNC] Installing 3.11 in Windows

[Stan Brown (using GC 2.6.19)]

On 2023-08-03 07:04, Kalpesh Patel wrote:
> Stan - if you have modern system then there should be enough
> resources to install VirtualBox to install OS instances and specific
> versions of GNC on each instance. That should isolate your
> functional 2.6.19 from others without stepping on each other. If you
> are somewhat knowledgeable of development side then you can use
> Vagrant (Open Source from Hashi Corp -
> https://developer.hashicorp.com/vagrant/intro) and bring down
> fully-built vanilla OS "box" from Vagrant Cloud
> (https://app.vagrantup.com/boxes/search) of your choice to use for
> conversion.

Thanks for the idea, but I'm unwilling to download a fully functional
operating system to put on a PC that I use for hours each day. Maybe I'm
being paranoid, but it just seems too easy to put spyware in such a VM.
I have no particular reason to think they did that, but in computing
it's best to consider not what you expect to go wrong but what could
possibly go wrong. Yes, I know the website says "open source", but
vetting a whole OS is a massive undertaking and who's going to do that?

I do have one VirtualBox VM on my desktop PC now. It's running a copy of
Windows 10 that I installed from an ISO downloaded from Microsoft.com.
No Internet, no USB, and the only file sharing is with one data
directory on the host machine. The only application the VM runs is GC
4.13, which was the latest available last winter when I set up the VM.
I'm on the board of a small nonprofit, and I use it to do their
bookkeeping, though I would like to move their data file to my real
machines. (My personal accounting is still at GC 2.6.19 on my desktop
and laptop.)

But telling you why I'm reluctant to use Vagrant has given me an idea. I
don't need to set up multiple VMs, but rather snapshots of one VM. On
the virtual machine, I can:
1. Snapshot the nonprofit's current setup as it already exists with GC
4.13 on the VM.
2. Uninstall GC 4.13 and install 2.6.21. Copy my personal 2.6.19 file,
with reports and settings, to the VM. Check and repair under 2.6.21,
verify that everything is okay, then freeze a snapshot.
3. Upgrade the VM to 3.11, check and repair, test, snapshot.
4. Ditto for 4.x, testing both my personal accounts file and the
nonprofit's file. (I'll have to think of a clear but simple naming
convention to distinguish personal saved reports from the nonprofit's
saved reports.)
5. Ditto for 5.x, checking both data files.
5. Finally, on the real machine, uninstall 2.6.19 and install 5.x, copy
both data files plus reports and settings from the VM, and heave a big
sigh of relief.

Stan Brown
Tehachapi, CA, USA
https://BrownMath.com