[GNC] Ubuntu PPAs (Launchpad)

[David Cousens]

Brad,
 
The other option is rather than relying on repos and someone else to
update them is to simply build GnuCash from the source code tarball or
from the Github repository. It takes me about 15 min to build and
install once you have all the dependencies setup - there are some
scripts on the wiki which will do most of this and using cmake it will
tell you if any dependencies for the latest version are not being met
and then it is usually just a matter of locating  the requisite library
and dev header in the Ubuntu/Debian repositories.. 

I update my OS (Linux Mint - ubuntu,debian derivative) peridically but
it can often involve a few days to get the software setup back to
normal if you do the install from the ISO . I usually use Mint's update
procedure but that can also run into problems if you use repos which
load newer versions of some libraries and you have to restore it to the
default for Mint's update to proceed.

I usually have the latest version of GnuCash up and running within a
day or .two of release

On Tue, 2025-05-20 at 16:34 -0700, Brad Morrison wrote:
> Hi Bruce, John, & others, 
> 
> Interesting topic! 
> 
> The fewer versions of GNUCash there are, the less work it is for
> developers to reproduce issues AKA limiting possibilities reduces the
> work involved in trying to reproduce & understand issues. 
> 
> Repology seems to list 256 various Linux distro versions that use
> many
> different versions of GNUCash in their repositories -
> https://repology.org/project/gnucash/versions 
> 
> I can think of a few ways to approach this: 
> 
> 1. Are there specific reasons why some developers/users would still
> be
> using Ubuntu 22.04? It looks like the current version of Ubuntu is
> 25.04
> - https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=ubuntu 
> 
> If there was a financial cost to upgrading the operating system,
> whether
> from having to purchase the current version of Windows or MacOS or
> having to purchase new(er) hardware, that's totally valid.  
> 
> For operating systems like Ubuntu & other free Linux distros
> (https://distrowatch.com/), if someone's existing hardware supports
> the
> current version, why not spend the few hours upgrading the OS? 
> 
> 2. It looks like it is possible to run Flatpaks on Ubuntu & here are
> the
> setup instructions - https://flatpak.org/setup/Ubuntu &
> https://flathub.org/setup/Ubuntu 
> 
> 3. Here is the Flathub page for the GNUCash flatpak -
> https://flathub.org/apps/org.gnucash.GnuCash 
> 
> Instead of reducing the workload for GNUCash developers, increasing
> the
> options for supporting the project include: 
> 
> Financial contributions - https://www.gnucash.org/donate.phtml  
> 
> Nonfinancial contributions -
> https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Contributing_to_GnuCash (more geared
> towards users) & https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/WishList (more for
> developers) 
> 
> ---
> Thanks, 
> 
> Brad - https://www.facebook.com/brad.morrison.12327/ &
> https://nextdoor.com/profile/01mP46jj8KCzj3sP4 &
> https://norcal.social/@BradMorrison 
> 
> On 2025-05-20 14:30, Bruce Schuck wrote:
> 
> > On 5/20/25 1:59 PM, John Ralls wrote:
> > 
> > An alternative for those using older Ubuntu releases
> 
> > 5.11 is as up to date as it gets, that's the current release.
> 
> I noted "older Ubuntu releases" for those such as me on Ubuntu 22.04
> LTS. I usually upgrade every other LTS, so I skipped 24.04 and will
> update my OS sometime after 26.04LTS is released next April.
> 
> If I want to run 5.11 on my system I would need to either use a
> flatpack
> or compile 5.11 myself. Either is relatively simple for me, as I have
> experimented on virtual systems. But for Ubuntu 22.04, the most
> recent
> GC release via standard Ubuntu/Canonical repo is 4.8.
> 
> I started thinking about PPAs when a couple reported YahooJSON issues
> that were recently fixed. Both were using older Ubuntu releases (I
> think
> 20.04 and 22.04) and a 5.x GC flatpack. Not sure why neither of them
> didn't just get the latest flatpack at first.
> 
> Yes, I know Ubuntu uses Debian packages. I build binary packages at
> work
> for a couple in-house applications that we deploy using Ansible or
> SaltStack. But PPAs don't allow one to directly upload binary
> packages.
> 
> > I won't object if someone is willing to step up and be the
> > "official" PPA-maker *provided* that that someone *commits* to
> > doing
> > it reliably for every release until they find somebody to replace
> > them.
> 
> I assuumed that at least part of the reason for not using PPA was
> workload. And from my playing around, building a flatpack (not
> installing) is easier than preparing and building a PPA source
> package.
> But then I've just started playing with creating my own.
> 
> Thanks for the info.
> 
> Bruce S.
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