[GNC] GnuCash SQLite: file attachments not recognized across platforms.

[Jim DeLaHunt]

Hello, Tarik:

Welcome to GnuCash. I hope you will be able to get useful help on this list.

On 2025-12-28 08:31, tarik semrade wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I am a GnuCash user and I use GnuCash on two machines: Linux and Windows.
>
> I switched to the SQLite file format in order to use a Python library 
> and be able to test and parse the SQLite database.
>
> One issue I am facing concerns the use of *absolute paths on Windows*. 
> When I started using GnuCash on Windows, I attached files using 
> absolute paths. After some time, I realized that Windows paths could 
> cause problems: when I open my book on another machine, the linked 
> files are not recognized.
>
> For this year, after resetting all the accounts, I want to start a new 
> year with a more flexible method, since I use GnuCash from both Linux 
> and Windows.
>
> I used to use GitHub to synchronize the files. The GnuCash version on 
> Windows is 5.5, while on my Ubuntu 25 system I use version 5.15. The 
> book opens correctly without issues on both systems. However, one 
> thing I tested was updating the Windows version of GnuCash to the 
> latest release to match my Linux machine. I noticed that when I open 
> the book with the latest Windows version, some strange characters 
> appear. I reinstalled the 5.5 version since it works good.
>
> If you have any recommendations to help resolve the issue with linked 
> file paths, I would be very grateful.

I did some work on the file paths for my transaction attachments, so I 
have some idea of how these paths work in GnuCash. I can offer hints, 
but not a full solution.

It would help if you could give examples of these "strange characters". 
Can you give a screen of what they look like, and what you expect to see 
if there are no "strange characters"?

What originally saved the paths with these strange characters to your 
GnuCash file?  Was it GnuCash 5.5 on Windows, and now GnuCash current 
version shows strange characters on those same paths? Or is it just 
paths which you saved using GnuCash on Linux which appear with strange 
characters in GnuCash on Windows current version?

I don't know if the GnuCash app makes promises that attachment paths 
work across platforms. I do know:

  * Absolute paths are unlikely to work, because the roots of absolute
    paths are different on Windows and Linux (e.g. "C:\Users" and
    "/usr/".  So, using relative paths to attachments is more likely to
    work.
  * Windows and Linux use different path separator characters ("\" and
    "/").
  * Windows and Linux use different character code conventions to store
    path names (16-bit UTF-16LE and 8-bit UTF-8).

It is possible that GnuCash code makes an effort to smooth over these 
differences. It is also possible that it makes no particular effort. If 
you are comfortable reading software source code, you could read the 
GnuCash source code to try and find out.

I hope this helps you take some steps forward. Best regards,
     —Jim DeLaHunt