[GNC] Running mixed versions (okay?)

[Adrien Monteleone]

There are some changes between major versions. There are checks silently 
run when you first open your file with a new major version.

You can run those checks explicitly via Actions > Check & Repair.

The goal is usually to keep compatibility between the last minor release 
of a major version and the next major version, in case you upgrade, have 
serious issues, and need to fall back.

I wouldn't worry too much about mix-n-match within the same major 
version (say, all machines on 5.x) but if you have to keep one machine 
held back, at least get it to the last release of that version. In your 
case, that would mean getting the Linux box up to 4.14. Since you're 
using Ubuntu 22.04 and GnuCash 4.8, I'll hazard a guess that was from 
the Ubuntu repo. You'd need to switch to flatpak to get 4.14 if you 
don't want to build from source, but in either of those cases, you might 
as well just bump the Linux box to match your others in the 5.x series.

The only alternative I can think of to keep the Linux version at 4.8, 
would be to export your transactions regularly from one of the other 
machines and then import them into a separate file used only with 4.8. 
But that is way more work than even building from source each release, 
not to mention updating a flatpak.

Regards,
Adrien

On 2/24/24 10:01 AM, R Losey wrote:
> So I have wonderful GnuCash installed on WIndows 10, on an M1 iMac, and on
> Linux (Ubuntu 22.04LTS).
> 
> I mostly use the iMac and Windows versions, and I've always kept these two
> versions in sync; that is, when I decided to upgrade to 5.1, I install 5.1
> back-to-back on the iMac and Windows computers... mostly this was due to a
> fear of corrupting the data files by running different versions.
> 
> But lately, and from education reading this list, I am thinking that the
> data file format doesn't change, and the GnuCash version is more like a
> "shell" around which the data file is operated upon, so maybe it's okay to
> have Linux at 4.8 and Windows at 5.5-1 and iMac at 5.3.
> 
> But I thought I'd run it by this group to see what people think.
> 
> Thanks!
>