Announcement 2.1.2

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This is a draft!


GnuCash 2.1.2 released

The GnuCash development team proudly announces GnuCash 2.1.2 aka "...", the third of several unstable 2.1.x releases of the GnuCash Open Source Accounting Software which will eventually lead to the stable version 2.2.0. With this new release series, GnuCash is available on Microsoft Windows for the first time, and it also runs on GNU/Linux, *BSD, Solaris and Mac OSX. This release is intended for developers and testers who want to help tracking down all those bugs that are still in there. With this release, the 2.1.x series will go into string freeze for translators to update their translations until 2.2.0 comes out.

DATA FILE NOTICE If you are using Scheduled Transactions, the data file saved by GnuCash 2.1.2 and higher is NOT backward-compatible with GnuCash 2.0 anymore. Please make a safe backup of your 2.0 data before upgrading to 2.1.2.

WARNING: Make sure you make backups of any files used in testing versions of GnuCash in the 2.1.x series. Although the developers go to great lengths to ensure that no data will be lost we cannot guarantee that your data will not be affected if for some reason GnuCash crashes in testing these releases.

Please test any and all features important to you. Then post any bugs you find to http://bugzilla.gnome.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=GnuCash

Download:

What's New in GnuCash 2.1.2?

This is a draft!

This release has only a few user-visible new features, except for the completed port to the Microsoft Windows operating system. In summary, the following features are new, compared to the older 2.0.x series:

  • Port to Microsoft Windows completed.
  • The Scheduled Transaction code has been refactored. The Scheduled Transaction list view is now integrated into the main window, and the Since-Last-Run dialog has been simplified.
  • SWIG is now used instead of g-wrap for providing language bindings.
  • Check printing has been improved, with new formats and simpler format descriptions.
  • DATA FILE NOTICE If you are using Scheduled Transactions, the data file saved by GnuCash 2.1.2 and higher is NOT backward-compatible with GnuCash 2.0 anymore because of extensions in the file format. Please make a safe backup of your 2.0 data before upgrading to 2.1.2.

Bugfixes and improvements since the last version 2.1.1 include:

  • Internal GObject integration is much more advanced by now
  • Crash on OFX import crashing has been fixed
  • Windows timezone problems fixed
  • Some memory leaks have been fixed

(EDITORIAL NOTE: To check the milestone-targeted lists in bugzilla: see milestone-2.1.0, see milestone-2.1.1 see milestone-2.1.2 )

Caveats for testers:

  • Any 2.1.x version might crash unexpectedly at any point during runtime. If you test some serious work in a 2.1.x release, make sure you hit "Save" after ever non-trivial workstep.
  • The documentation has had screenshots updated, however, many help texts usually only refers to the 2.0.x or even 1.8.x series. Everyone is invited to help improve the documentation; see http://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Development on how to get involved.

How can you help?

  • We would like to encourage people to test this and any further releases as much as possible and submit bug reports in order that we can polish GnuCash to be as stable as possible for the 2.2.0 release in a few weeks. Then post any bugs you find to bugzilla http://bugzilla.gnome.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=GnuCash
  • If you have the urge to help beyond testing please get involved in the discussions on the GnuCash mailing lists which you will find at http://www.gnucash.org. We especially need people to help with updating the documentation. Please see http://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Development on how to get involved.
  • Translating: The new release comes with some new translation strings. If you consider contributing a translation, we invite you to test this release already. A string freeze will be announced in one of the later 2.1.x releases. Please check http://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Translation_Status for updates on this.

Getting GnuCash

GnuCash 2.1.2 can be downloaded from gnucash.org or sourceforge.net. It is available as source code. For the Microsoft Windows operating system, a self-installing setup program will be made available within a few days which includes all necessary additional libraries.

To install GnuCash, users will need Gnome 2, guile, and slib. Neither the currently used swig nor the previously used g-wrap packages are needed anymore when compiling from tarball or when installing a binary.

About the Program

GnuCash is a free, open source accounting program released under the GNU General Public License (GPL) and available for GNU/Linux, *BSD, Solaris, Mac OSX, and Microsoft Windows. It is collaboratively developed by 12 people from over 5 countries.

Programming on GnuCash began in 1997, and its first stable release was in 1998.