User talk:Twt

this is my own little playground for trying out stuff

Connecting to LibreOffice (twt scratch)

TWT is collecting some stuff for querying or reporting in GnuCash via Libreoffice. (Based on email discussion "gnucash, sql, and libre office" on gnucash-user starting Feb 18, 2016).

Old Gnucash to LibreOffice macro is available at

https://github.com/cstim/gnucash/blob/master/contrib/gnuc2ooo.py

https://github.com/Gnucash/gnucash/tree/master/contrib

Instructions and examples for this old macro are at

http://www.alice-dsl.net/gnuc2ooo/save/gnuc2ooo_en/intro.html

(see the navigation links at the top)

Here's a script for going to mysql:

http://www.xaprb.com/blog/2006/03/12/gnucash-to-mysql-export-script/

There's also lots of info about converting GnuCash XML using XSLT, and there are some example xslt in https://github.com/Gnucash/gnucash/tree/master/contrib

Connecting GnuCash sqlite to LibreOffice via ODBC

Basic info: https://wiki.openoffice.org/wiki/Documentation/How_Tos/Using_SQLite_With_OpenOffice.org

Instructions for Ubuntu (based on 14.04 LTS)

1) Install the packages

$ sudo apt-get install unixodbc unixodbc-bin libsqliteodbc

that last libsqliteodbc installs the sqlite to ODBC driver and registers it in the system. The instructions imply you'll also need to install the sqlite3 package but I think you probably don't need it for this.

2) save A COPY OF your gnucash data as a sqlite3 file

3) Create the data source (as a regular user NOT sudo)

ODBCManageDataSourcesQ4

Use the tool to create a new sqlite3 data source and connect it to the sqlite3 file you created with gnucash.

4) now you can open LibreOffice Base, create a new Database, connected to an existing ODBC data source, choose the one you created in step 3, and when Base opens you will see the inscrutable tables in GnuCash.

5) [Insert info here about how to make it useful (how to join tables usefully, etc.)]

6) Presumably you close Base and then save a fresh copy of GnuCash to the same file to update your data again and reopen Base to reconnect to updated data, preserving your queries and joins.

Building (twt scratch)

This is a place Twt is using collect some ideas to improve Gnucash#Building page

BY THE WAY ... if you're seeing this before I'm finished (very likely, given my uneven work habits) what I am attempting to do is eliminate the detail problem with the Ubuntu (and Debian and...) section(s) by IMPROVING the detail in the generic section. In other words, the Ubuntu section suffers from too much specificity (examples show totally different scenarios for DIFFERENT Ubuntu releases, whereas the bulk of the examples apply to ALL Ubuntu (and usually Debian) releases. The generic section (for all linux distributions) suffers from too little description.

I am very unfamiliar with Fedora RPM stuff so that will likely be my weak point in all this.

General Instructions

ORIGINAL Disclaimer

This page deals with building the developers version of GnuCash from the Git repository. If you are searching instructions for the stable version, you should read GnuCash#Installation.

This page does not cover most optional third-party modules such as the Perl module Finance::Quote.

NEW Disclaimer

This page deals with building Gnucash in linux. Compiling GnuCash in Windows is possible, but much more difficult than in linux. For details, see GnuCash on Microsoft Windows.

Once configured, the linux build process runs automatically. The specific details depend upon how you retrieved the source files, and what linux distribution and version you are using.

Get Source Files

Create a directory to hold your source files for compilation, such as ~/src , and put the source files there.

You can get the source files in 3 ways: 1. Download the official tarball 2. Get the sources via git 3. Get a pre-configured source file for your linux distribution

For the very latest source code, get the sources from Git or use the latest release source file of type gnucash-<version>.tar.gz from Sourceforge. Do not attempt to use tarballs from GitHub.

You may be able to compile GnuCash using a pre-configured source file, which will bring in all the dependencies and create a binary package ready to install in your system using its package manager. See the distro-specific instructions below.

For example, after you use web browser to download the tarball for GnuCash version 99.9.9 from Sourceforge into a ~/Downloads directory:

 cd ~/src
 mv ~/Downloads/gnucash-99.9.9.tar.bz2 .
 tar -xf gnucash-99.9.9.tar.bz2
 cd gnucash-99.9.9

OR for example, if you want to use git to retrieve the sources of GnuCash version 99.9.9 into a new gnucash directory:

 cd ~/src 
  git clone git://github.com/Gnucash/gnucash.git gnucash 
 cd gnucash
 git checkout 99.9.9 

Important: If you need to use the most up-to-date sources (not necessarily a stable release), use the maint tag:

 git checkout maint

Install Dependencies

The autogen, configure and make commands (below) check for GnuCash's build dependencies, but you can save a lot of time by installing most of the dependencies beforehand. See #Distro-specific Information later on this page.

For distros or releases not described below, examine the Dependencies wiki page and the README.dependencies file for the list of build dependencies for your distribution, the README.git file for notes on compiling gnucash, and the HACKING file for notes on hacking the code.

If autogen, config or make (below) fail due to the lack of a needed library, you will need to find that library as supplied for your linux distribution and try again.

autogen (If Needed to Prepare for configure)

If you retrieved the sources via git, you will need to generate the configure script in the build directory using autogen.sh.

If you retrieved the tarball from Sourceforge, the configure script was in the tarball and you should skip to the configure step (next heading).

You can either compile GnuCash in the same directories where you copied the source tree, or in a separate build directory. Many folks prefer to compile using a separate directory.

If you're compiling git-retrieved sources in the source tree:

 cd ~/src/gnucash
 ./autogen.sh

If you're compiling git-retrieved sources in a separate build directory, switch to the directory and run the autogen script from there.

For example, if you have the sources in ~/src/gnucash and you already created ~/build for building:

 cd ~/build
 ../src/gnucash/autogen.sh
 

The autogen script produces some messages as it proceeds.

configure (Set Options for Compilation)

You must configure the source before compiling using the make command, and you will normally run configure from whichever directory you are building in. You can either build GnuCash in the same directories where you copied the source tree, or in a separate build directory. Many folks prefer to compile in a separate directory, primarily because it's easier to find and delete the build files when you're finished.

If you ran the autogen script, stay in the build directory when it finishes.

If you downloaded the tarball, either cd to the top of the source tree or to a separate build directory.

You can run configure, accepting all the default options. For example

 ./configure

Or for example

 cd ~/src/gnucash-99.9.9
 ./configure

Normally you will set some options, however. You can have configure list GnuCash's configure options. For example:

 ./configure --help

A more typical configure command would include some build options and might look as follows:

 ./configure --prefix=/opt/gnucash-devel \
    --enable-debug --enable-doxygen \
    --enable-error-on-warning --enable-compile-warnings \
    [--enable-ofx [...]]

--prefix

Where will the package be installed? If you install for test purposes, you might install it in your home directory to avoid sudoing. Many installations include ~/bin in your default path, so that might be a logical place to install a local copy for testing. You should never use the same path as you distribution!

--enable-debug

Include debugging symbols in the binaries to pinpoint crashing code using a tool such as gdb.

--enable-compile-warnings

Provide debugging messages to help track down errors that affect compiling.

TODO: add some more configure descriptions here? Remove the enable-ofx example?

(Note: There are issues with the guile configuration of slib which will cause configure to fail on many distributions. See: #slib Issues)

make (Compile Source to Binaries)

After configure completes, stay in the build directory and start the compiler:

 make

optional - if you changed something in the sources:

 make check

optional -- if your system has multiple cores and you want to use them to speed compiling, you can increase the number of jobs devoted to make. For example if your system has four cores you could use four jobs (or more):

 make -j4

make install (Install Binaries For Running)

After make finishes, install

If your prefix was below $HOME:

 make install

else

 sudo make install

Sudo will ask you for the administrator password so the binaries can be moved to system directories.

gnucash (Run GnuCash)

If your prefix was below $HOME

 ~/bin/gnucash

Note that your distro may already have your path set to find applications installed in your user's bin directory, so you may be able to run GnuCash from a terminal by typing just gnucash (without the path) in the terminal.

If your prefix was elsewhere, you may need to specify the path:

 /opt/gnucash-devel/bin/gnucash

You can add --help to see a list of options available when starting GnuCash:

 gnucash --help

"Reverse" commands

make uninstall (remove binaries)

To remove your installation *before* you change relevant options like configure prefix= and before you run make again...

run from your build directory

 make uninstall

or if you installed GnuCash outside your $HOME directory:

 sudo make uninstall

to remove it (assuming your distro is configured to use sudo). Otherwise you will have to login as root.

make clean (clean build directory before compiling)

To clean up your build directory, run

 make clean

If you use a separate build directory, you can remove its content instead.

git clean (remove configure and make files)

In some cases, make clean might not be sufficient, and you can clean your git gnucash directory to remove extraneous build and configure files. After you run git clean you will have to start with ./autogen.sh again.

IMPORTANT: FIXME warning here about losing changed untracked source files?

Use this command:

 git clean -f

To remove all files and directories not part of the gnucash repository, run:

 git clean -fdx

If you're using the Eclipse programming environment, add some exceptions to preserve the Eclipse project information (if you haven't already added them to your .gitignore file):

 git clean -fdx -e /.project  -e /.cproject -e /.autotools -e /.settings/

Distro-specific Information

See the README.dependencies file for library dependency notes. Also check out the dependencies page.

Slackware

Slackware installation is covered on this page.

Debian

Running

 aptitude build-dep gnucash

will install all the gnucash dependencies for the current release. You may need others.

On Debian, the packages you'll probably need are (among many others):

guile-1.6-dev
swig
libgnome2-dev
libgnomeui-dev
goffice-0-dev
libgsf-1-dev
libgtkhtml3.2-dev (3.6, 3.8, or 3.14 will also do)
libofx-dev (to enable ofx support)
libaqbanking16-dev (to enable aqbanking support. Don't use the newer libaqbanking20-dev - see AqBanking#Compatibility)
postgresql-dev (to enable sql support)

If you are building from git, you will also need the following installed before running autogen.sh:

git
automake
intltool
libtool
guile-1.6-dev

For the 2.0-branch of GnuCash you need additionally:

libgwrapguile-dev OR
guile-g-wrap

If you see the error "<unnamed port>: no code for module (g-wrap gw standard)" at runtime, see this particular FAQ.

Ubuntu

Ubuntu releases are supported for various lengths of time; Wikipedia has a handy chart showing which versions are still supported.

Note: Dear Ubunteros, please do not copy and paste whole paragraphs. Instead adjust single sections in the form

Version x and newer:

do this

Version x-1 and before:

do that.

Can someone of you clean up this chapter and later remove this note?

Compiling Newer Ubuntu Packages on an Older Release ("self-backporting")

If you are on an older version of Ubuntu (or Debian for that matter) such as Trusty 14.04 LTS, you may be able to compile a newer Ubuntu or Debian version yourself (essentially backporting it yourself).

If the newer package is available in Utopic 14.10, add a line in your /etc/apt/sources.list (or for newer versions of Ubuntu, include a new file in the /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ directory) with the correct format. For Utopic, the line would be:

deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu utopic main restricted universe

You want the version (Utopic in above example) to be newer than the system release you have installed. Then you can use the following lines to compile and install whatever software version is in the newer Ubuntu release, "backporting" the newer software to your older release of Ubuntu.

cd ~/src/
sudo aptitude update
sudo apt-get install build-essential fakeroot
sudo apt-get build-dep gnucash
apt-get --compile source gnucash
sudo dpkg -i *.deb

Easy as 1-2-3!*

• If apt-get build-dep fails on the gnucash packages with a message like "E: Build-Depends dependency for gnucash cannot be satisfied because the package XXXXX cannot be found" then that means you need additional updated libraries on your system in order to backport the software. Unless you know there are only one or two new libraries needed, it's most likely MUCH easier just to build GnuCash from source. (See directions below.)

• If dpkg -i *.deb fails because it lists a bunch of dependencies (this happens if you've never installed gnucash before) the easiest way to get apt to bring them in is using -f (fix broken) install:

sudo apt-get -f install

Alternatively, you can download the source package and start the compilation separately (the advantage being you can pass parameters to the compiler). For example, if you want to pass a jobs command to the compiler to use more "cores" of your machine and make the compilation go faster:

(after installing dependencies)
cd ~/src
apt-get source gnucash
cd gnucash-99-9-9 # directory containing GnuCash version 99.9.9
dpkg-buildpackage -j4  # four job threads to speed up compiler

Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (Trusty Tahr)

To build from the source tarball download the source code tarball from http://www.gnucash.org/download.phtml and extract to an appropriate directory.

Next install the build dependencies

sudo apt-get build-dep gnucash

(On a fresh install I also needed to purge guile-2.0 and install these packages as well follow the guide below for issues with slib)

sudo apt-get purge guile-2.0
sudo apt-get install slib libgnomeui-common libgnomeui-dev guile-1.8 guile-1.8-dev checkinstall

if want to use the alternative database backends then:

sudo apt-get install libdbd-{sqlite3,pgsql,mysql}

In a terminal cd to the gnucash directory and run

./configure --prefix=/path/to/install/gnucash/to --enable-compile-warnings --with-html-engine=webkit
make
sudo checkinstall

The prefix might be, for example,

--prefix=/usr/bin/gnucash2.4

Running checkinstall will ask you some options on how the package is named, etc. This will produce a .DEB which you can then simply install (adjust the path/filename accordingly)

sudo dpkg -i /path/to/deb/gnucash_2.4.15-1_amd64.deb

Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin)

To build using the git repository first install git

sudo apt-get install git

then in an appropriate directory run

git clone git://github.com/Gnucash/gnucash.git gnucash

which will make a git repository in a directory gnucash.

Next install the build dependencies

sudo apt-get build-dep gnucash

and a few required or useful tools

sudo apt-get install libtool swig git libgnomeui-dev xsltproc libxslt-dev doxygen

if want to use the alternative database backends then:

sudo apt-get install libdbd-{sqlite3,pgsql,mysql}

In a terminal cd to the gnucash directory and checkout the version that you want, so to get the latest 2.4 branch version:

git checkout 2.4

or to build a released version, for example:

git checkout 2.4.9

Then to build it

./autogen.sh
./configure --prefix=/path/to/install/to/gnucash --enable-compile-warnings --with-html-engine=webkit --disable-error-on-warning
make
sudo make install

The prefix might be, for example,

--prefix=/usr/bin/gnucash2.4

Then to run it, assuming there were no errors

/usr/bin/gnucash2.4/bin/gnucash

Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot)

To build using the git repository first install git-core

sudo apt-get install git-core

then in an appropriate directory run

git clone  git://github.com/Gnucash/gnucash.git gnucash

which will make a git repository in a directory gnucash.

The main branch in git is conventionally named master, whereas in this repository it is named trunk (due to the fact that it is derived from a subversion repository I believe). This is not a problem but if you would rather have it named master then cd into the gnucash directory and

git branch -t master refs/remotes/origin/trunk
git checkout master 

Next install the build dependencies

sudo apt-get build-dep gnucash

and a few required or useful tools

sudo apt-get install libtool swig git

if want to use the alternative database backends then:

sudo apt-get install libdbd-{sqlite3,pgsql,mysql}

In a terminal cd to the gnucash directory and checkout the version that you want, so to get the latest 2.4 branch version:

git checkout 2.4

or to build a released version, for example:

git checkout 2.4.7

Then to build it

./autogen.sh
./configure --prefix=/path/to/install/to/gnucash --enable-compile-warnings --with-html-engine=webkit
make
sudo make install

The prefix might be, for example,

--prefix=/usr/bin/gnucash2.4

Then to run it, assuming there were no errors

/usr/bin/gnucash2.4/bin/gnucash

Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat)

Follow the steps described for #Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (Lucid Lynx).

Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (Lucid Lynx)

First, we need install all dependencies of building GnuCash.

sudo aptitude build-dep gnucash
sudo aptitude install texinfo git intltool libdbi0-dev libdbd-{sqlite3,pgsql,mysql} guile-1.8 guile-1.8-dev doxygen libwebkit-dev

Since Ubuntu/Debian doesn't have guile-1.8-slib, which is actually just a softlink to slib, we create the softlink and generate the catalog manually.

cd /usr/share/guile/1.8
sudo ln -s ../../slib slib
sudo guile -c "(use-modules (ice-9 slib)) (require 'new-catalog)"

And then we create the directories for source code and installation, and check out source code from git master

mkdir -p ~/unstable ~/development
rm -rf ~/unstable/gnucash ~/development/gnucash
cd ~/development
git clone https://github.com/Gnucash/gnucash/ gnucash
cd gnucash

Then, we build it by following commands:

./autogen.sh
./configure --prefix=$HOME/unstable/gnucash --enable-debug --enable-doxygen --enable-error-on-warning --enable-compile-warnings
make all install

If there are no errors, we can run it:

~/unstable/gnucash/bin/gnucash

Gentoo

Gentoo instructions can be found on Gnucash-svn installation on Gentoo.

Mac OS X

Mac OS X instructions can be found on MacOSX/Quartz (This is the procedure used for building the binary packages) or gnucash installation from source on Mac OS X.

Fedora

Fedora Core 5

At least the following packages are required to build GnuCash from source on FC5:

libtool-ltdl-devel
guile-devel
g-wrap-devel
libgnomeprint22-devel
libgnomeprintui22-devel
gtkhtml3-devel

Suggested way to satify all requirements:

# yum install libtool-ltdl-devel guile-devel g-wrap-devel libgnomeprint22-devel \
  libgnomeprintui22-devel gtkhtml3-devel

Please note that while the configure script only checks for GtkHTML up to 3.8, recent versions of GtkHTML ship with "libgtkhtml-3.8.pc" so yes, you CAN use gtkhtml3-3.10 on FC5.

Fedora 13

On Fedora 13, the build instructions are very similar to the ones for Ubuntu 10.04 (above). First, we need install all dependencies of building GnuCash.

sudo yum-builddep gnucash -y
sudo yum install texinfo git intltool libdbi-devel libdbi guile guile-devel doxygen gtkhtml3-devel -y

And then we create the directories for source code, and check out source code from git master

mkdir -p ~/development
cd ~/development
git clone https://github.com/Gnucash/gnucash/ gnucash
cd gnucash

Then, we build it by following commands:

./autogen.sh
./configure --prefix=$HOME/unstable/gnucash --enable-debug --enable-doxygen --enable-error-on-warning --enable-compile-warnings
make all install

If there are no errors, we can run it:

~/unstable/gnucash/bin/gnucash

slib Issues

Ubuntu Hardy and Intrepid, and if the mailing lists are to be believed, many other distributions as well, produce the following error when running the configure script:

configure:27495: checking for SLIB support

configure:27509: error:

Cannot find SLIB. Are you sure you have it installed?

See http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=347922

...

This is not a problem with gnucash! The issue seems to be that the slib installation does not properly configure guile. Two items need to be fixed: a guile initialization file has an incorrect path, and the initialization of the slib catalog is not done. On Ubuntu, the initialization file is /usr/share/guile/1.8/ice-9/slib.scm. There is no guarantee that this will be the same on another distribution. This file references the guile.init file supplied by slib to hook slib into guile. Look in the file to find:

(load-from-path "slib/guile.init")

This line must be changed to reflect the correct location of the guile.init file:

(load-from-path "/usr/share/slib/init/guile.init")

This path is correct for Ubuntu. It will probably not be the same on other distributions. Once this is fixed, slib must be invoked from guile to initialize the catalog:

sudo guile -c "(use-modules (ice-9 slib)) (require 'printf)"

Then, if there were no errors, the returned status will be "0". We can check this by echoing the status variable from the environment:

echo $?

Which should return 0. If it does, then the configure script should now get past the section which checks for slib. Note that since standard users probably do not have write permissions to the slib and guile directories, the catalog initialization will fail unless you sudo! I recently discovered (7/1/09) that upgrading Ubuntu from Hardy to Intrepid silently breaks slib by undoing this change, forcing you to repeat the fix.

Finally, there are several additional suggestions that can be gleaned from others who have had this problem. I've listed these below in case they are needed on some distributions. As far as I can tell, on Ubuntu at least, all of these additional actions are superfluous.

Environment Strings:

export SCM_INIT_PATH=/usr/share/slib/init/guile.init

export SCHEME_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/share/slib

export GUILE_LOAD_PATH=/usr/share/guile/site /usr/share/guile/1.8 /usr/share/guile

Symbolic Links:

ln -s /usr/share/guile/1.8/ /usr/share/guile/site

ln -s /usr/share/slib/ /usr/share/guile/1.8/slib

Obviously, the paths here refer to the Ubuntu install. Yours may differ.

Tutorial on Plugins

This section describes how to build a plugin from scratch.

A plugin is a runtime loadable module which provides optional functions for GnuCash. There are a couple of plugins plus a skeleton example in src/plugins. To add your own plugin:

• Copy the example to a new plugin subdirectory:

 cd src/plugins
 cp -R example your-plugin-name

• edit Makefile.am to add your-plugin-name to the subdirs list
• edit configure.ac, inserting the following line near the end just before AC_OUTPUT:

 AC_CONFIG_FILES(src/plugins/your-plugin-name/Makefile src/plugins/your-plugin-name/ui/Makefile src/plugins/your-plugin-name/glade/Makefile)

• edit the source files in your-plugin-name to actually do what you want, rename them to make sense, and adjust the filenames in the three Makefile.am to match.
• Rebuild GnuCash:

 cd ../..
 ./autogen.sh
 ./configure --whatever options you usually use
 make
 make install

• to force GnuCash to load the plugin upon start

 echo '(gnc:module-load "gnucash/plugins/your-plugin-name" 0)' >> ~/.gnucash/config.user

The result will be your new plugin being available in the Tools menu, or wherever you added it in the UI file.