[GNC] Preferences reset problem?

[Geert Janssens]

Op dinsdag 29 juni 2021 22:22:36 CEST schreef incoming-gnucash at sabot.com:
> After gnucash 4.5 was announced, I tested upgrading to it on a
> standalone test machine (running flatpak on ubuntu 20.04), and
> I encountered the issue later described here:
> 
>   https://bugs.gnucash.org/show_bug.cgi?id=798194
> 
> where all my gnucash settings were lost.  On that same test machine, I
> tried downgrading to 4.4, but my settings were still gone.  This
> seemed kind of scary, so I put off upgrading my real machine pending a
> fix.
> 
> I see that the bug report linked to above includes some manual
> migration steps to export/re-import settings as a workaround, so I
> plan to just go ahead and try that (and I will go direct from 4.4 to
> 4.6, skipping 4.5).  But I thought I'd check in to make sure that
> there was no other pending/better way or automatic approach to this,
> or is the manual workaround the way to go?
> 
So far there's no better workaround. You can either manually set your 
preferences again or use the command provided in the bug report.

The short version of the issue is that a flatpak install of gnucash is as if 
you install gnucash on a different machine, completely isolated from your 
normal environment. There used to be a convenience to share preferences 
between your normal environment and that "virtual" flatpak machine. That 
convenience was dropped recently by the flatpak developers (well, the gnome 
runtime developers really). Instead they provide a means to automatically 
import settings from your main environment to the flatpak "virtual" machine, 
but for historical reasons this can't work with gnucash. So as for the 
convenience of having your preferences magically available in the flatpak 
environment we're stuck between a rock and a hard place unfortunately.

> If this issue affects all flatpak users, perhaps the release notes
> should reference the preferences issue and describe or link to the
> appropriate workaround?

That's a reasonable idea. I hope someone will do so.

Regards,

Geert