GnuCash 2.2.6 has been released (release notes here). The most notable change to our benefit is the new support for aqbanking 3. Aqbanking provides the online banking support in GnuCash, and version 2 required HKLM registry entries to work in Windows so it wasn't portable for non-admin users. Aqbanking 3 supposedly solves this problem, which should make GnuCash fully portable on non-admin accounts.
Unfortunately although it supports aqbanking 3, 2.2.6 has still been packaged with aqbanking 2. Rather than rush out a portable 2.2.6 without the benefit of portable online banking support I am going to explore options for getting it re-packaged with aqbanking 3 first. This will delay the portable release a few days. If I can't get it going within a week I'll go ahead and package up the existing 2.2.6 windows release.
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That sounds like a good plan, Shawn. I hope we can get a few online banking users to try it out.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
As an update, the GnuCash folks have this on their list but not necessarily anytime soon. I've taken a crack at it myself but am hitting some snags. I am leaving for vacation for a week and a half tomorrow evening so it will be some time yet. If the masses get restless before I get back, John, 2.2.6 should drop in with no issues if you want to release it as packaged by GnuCash.org.
formerly rayven01
I'm back from vacation and am going to take another crack at it this week. If I can't get it working by Thursday I'll go ahead and package up the regular release with aqbanking 2.
formerly rayven01
Sounds like a plan, Shawn. One suggestion, I'd recommend removing the warning notice on launch with no admin rights. I'd wager that most people don't use online banking with GnuCash, so I don't think it's worth bothering most users about on each launch. Or maybe only warn them if they've already set it up
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
It should only warn them once at first startup, not at every launch. If it does then that's a bug...
formerly rayven01
How about only warning them if they've already setup the online banking and it can't load it?
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
There is no setup required if they use Perl Portable. If they use ActivePerl a script must be run to install the right modules, but that also requires admin access to even run, so it would be warning them after the fact... The best I could probably do is test to see if perl.exe is in the path or if Perl Portable is installed and only warn if that's the case.
formerly rayven01
That sounds like a good plan. Most people won't, so they don't need to worry about it.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
After digging more into the online banking features, I'm not sure that checking for Perl is the right answer either. Perl is only required for finance-quote, which retrieves investment quotes. The part of online banking that requires admin access is aqbanking, which allows ofx or hbci transactions with banks directly from GnuCash. It's very possible that someone who doesn't use GnuCash for investing will want to use ofx/hbci online banking and never bother installing/configuring Perl.
The more I look at it the more I think the way it already is (warning the first time, and then never again) is the only way to do it. There's really no way to tell if someone is going to want to use aqbanking. If we don't warn them, the options to set it up don't even show in the menus if they don't have admin rights, with no explanation as to why.
Especially considering the fact that aqbanking 3 will get rid of the entire issue when it works, I think I'm going to leave it as is.
formerly rayven01
I've been slammed at work, but last night I was up until the wee hours and managed to get GnuCash to compile with aqbanking 3 with no errors. Unfortunately that doesn't mean it runs with no errors. GnuCash itself is fine, but aqbanking 3 does not appear to be ready for prime time on Windows. The Online Banking Setup wizard won't start from the button in GnuCash, and if you start it manually it crashes when you try and add users or banks due to assertion violations. My guess is that they are not properly accounting for windows line endings in their validity tests.
I'll bring up my findings to the GnuCash & AQBanking folks, but in the meantime tonight I'll try and whip up a 2.2.6 release with the official aqbanking 2 binaries. I need to update the installer to 0.10.1 and make the changes to the admin warning, otherwise it should drop in.
formerly rayven01