[GNC] GnuCash 5.4 Repackaged

[Brad Morrison]

Hi GNC folks,

I have not contributed much to this mailing list lately and have been 
dealing with other things, so I did not realize how much has changed.

I tried to look at the bug report cited below 
(https://bugs.gnucash.org/show_bug.cgi?id=799092), but GnuCash seems to 
use BugZilla to manage the bug reports. I have a BugZilla account for 
contributions I have tried to add to Mozilla products (Firefox & 
Thunderbird), but that BugZilla account does not work in the GnuCash 
version of BugZilla and I was unable to log in 
(https://bugs.gnucash.org/show_bug.cgi?id=799092&GoAheadAndLogIn=1). The 
Bugzilla websites/URLs are also setup differently for GnuCash & Mozilla.

I then tried to use my GnuCash mailing list account 
(https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Mailing_Lists & 
https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo) and was also not able to log 
in to GnuCash's version of BugZilla 
(https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Bugzilla & 
https://bugs.gnucash.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=%E2%88%82Bugzilla).

GnuCash still uses Mailman 2.1.29 
(https://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/index.html), which looks like it 
was released in July 2018 (http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/mailman/).

I then tried to log in to Mozilla's version of BugZilla 
(https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/home) and was able to successfully 
(https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/user_profile?user_id=713226), but that log 
in did not carry over to GnuCash's version of BugZilla.

I am still not logged in and I would like to have no more than 1 account 
per software application that I use.

So, it would be nice if GnuCash could integrate the various online 
account systems that it uses (Mailman, BugZilla, whatever else) so that 
users would only have to have 1 log in for all of GnuCash. That is still 
way more decentralized that having a single Apple, Google, or Microsoft 
login that applies to dozens (hundreds?) of different websites.

I use Linux Mint 21.2 (https://linuxmint.com/edition.php?id=305). LM 
21.2 (https://linuxmint.com/rel_victoria_cinnamon.php) is based on 
Ubuntu 22.04 "Jammy Jellyfish" 
(https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/jammy-jellyfish-release-notes/24668). In 
the LM Software Manager, there are 2 options for GnuCash, the "System 
Package" option lists version "1:4.8-1build2" & the "Flatpak (Flathub)" 
option lists version "5.4+ (Flathub 5.4.1)." That basically matches with 
what is listed on Repology for GnuCash 
(https://repology.org/project/gnucash/versions - GNU version 4.8 for 
Ubuntu 22.04).

LM 21.2 is the most current version of Linux Mint 
(https://linuxmint.com/download_all.php), but Repology lists the 
repository for Ubuntu 22.04 as having 17,168 out of 35,549 packages 
outdated (https://repology.org/repository/ubuntu_22_04).

The GnuCash download page (https://www.gnucash.org/download.phtml) lists 
plenty of stable releases for Windows, Mac, & various Linux distros. 
There seem to be 9,557 versions of GnuCash listed on the SourceForge 
download page (https://sourceforge.net/projects/gnucash/files/).

Stan's GnuCash email name lists him as using GnuCash 4.14, so I'm not 
sure if he is actually using 5.4 or 5.4.1 - ?

Christopher Lam is linking to the index of 32 bit builds for Windows 
(https://code.gnucash.org/builds/win32/stable/), I am surprised that 
GnuCash still releases & supports/maintains 32 bit versions for Windows - !

At the bottom of the GnuCash homepage 
(https://www.gnucash.org/index.phtml), it still lists that GnuCash 4.0 
has been released (https://www.gnucash.org/new_features-4.0.phtml).

OK, so I say all of that because my main point is that that is too much 
to keep track of. I don't know how GnuCash can be reasonably expected to 
accurately manage and/or maintain that many different options for that 
many different operating systems. There seems to be so much effort put 
on adding to GnuCash and not reducing the number of options with the 
goal of reducing the amount of maintenance and work required to use 
GnuCash. While I am sure that there are plenty of reasons for GnuCash 
doing things this way, it seems to be a real drag on the project's success.

Hope this helps!

Brad


On 9/29/23 12:11, Stan Brown (using GC 4.14) wrote:
> On 2023-09-29 09:22, john wrote:
>>> On Sep 29, 2023, at 04:07, Ian Keiller via gnucash-user <gnucash-user at gnucash.org> wrote:
>>>
>>> Odd thing happens when trying to update from 5.4 to 5.4.1 on Windows. Setup shows an error:
>>> The following applications are using files that need to be updated by Setup. It is recommended that you allow Setup to automatically close these applications. After the installation has completed, Setup will attempt to restart the applications.
>>>
>>> GnuCash Program File.
>>>
>>> On cancelling, I noticed in Task Manager there is an instance of GnuCash still running even though I had exited the the application.
>>> I have never seen this behaviour before, so could it be a bug introduced in 5.4?
>> https://bugs.gnucash.org/show_bug.cgi?id=799092  in fact.
>>
>> Regards,
>> John Ralls
> Do I interpret the text of the bug report correctly, that this occurs in
> version 5.4.1 but not 5.4? (I'm a little confused because the headers
> say "Version: 5.4".)
>
> Stan Brown
> Tehachapi, CA, USA
> https://BrownMath.com/
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