GnuCash 2.2.1 Portable - Beta 0.4 (Testers Needed)

I downloaded the installer, watched the install and then clicked the application from the menu.

I waited, waited, waited... Checked task manager and didn't see anything... Relaunched application watching task manager, saw the following:

Gnucaseportable
gconfd-2.exe
gnucash-bin.exe
gconf-tool.exe

then they all went away without ever launching the application.

System specs listed below:
OS: Windows 2000 Pro SP4
RAM: 1024MB

I'm going to 'reinstall' to see what results may change...

I know it doesn't work unless it is in a root directory of "PortableApps". Seems to be hardwired in the INI file that way.

I am a GNUcash windows user, and really have come to like this software a lot. I am a long-time Quicken user, and am frustrated with the restrictive single-user licence policy, as well as the never ending annual "bells & whistles" minor upgrade.

GNUcash is extremely capable, and appears to be rock solid on windows. The learning curve should be fine for existing Quicken users. IMHO it is a better product than any of its competition. (Although trying to build 2.2.1 on Ubuntu is a pain in the a**se for a new linux user).

I have a question --> it installs & runs very happily on my thumb drive and windows xp notebook. However, I uninstalled the original 2.2.1 GNUcash installation from my notebook's hard disk, and fired up the thumbdrive GNUcash version (which had worked fine before the hard disk uninstall. The thumbdrive version no longer works - the computer just states back at me!

Is this a bug? When you portabilised the app, did you uninstall your original hard disk version to see if there were any dependancies on the original install?

I am just about to do the (slow) reinstallation in order to see if I broke anything previously. I will post again to let you know what I find.

Anyway, fantastic job. GNUcash truly is essential software for me - and a very useful application of the great portabilisation skills that exist in this forum.

Regards,

Kim Wood

Put it on my external USB drive with all my other PortableApps under PAM R30 Mod. Application appears in menus; displays splash screen; and goes away without starting. Tried multiple times on the same work laptop. I haven't had an opportunity to try on another machine, yet.

IllusionofDemise,

This is probably heresy in this forum - but I am not particularly concerned about GNUcash leaving some artifacts behind on the host computer. I would be more concerned about the need to alter source & recompile, as that is likely to mean that the Portable version could significantly lag the non-portable version, and that future portable releases are not going to be available, as the portable developer turns his attention to a new project. Further, that it would probably be difficult for anyone else to pick up work on portable GNUcash, due to the complexity of the original GNUcash source.

My major wish is simply that GNUcashruns portably. Leaving artifacts behind is not particularly desirable, but is probably not very significant IMHO. Anyway, good luck with the proposed changes, as having access to a portable version is wonderful. I hope that you are able to release a new version soon that runs successfully.

Regards,

Kim Wood

Sounds encouraging - keep plugging away!. I believe that GNUCash will gradually build a strong following in the Windows market. I am sure that die-hard Quicken users like me (many of whom are wanting to explore a Linux future) will over time see what a great alternative GNUCash is.

I believe that this is a great addition to the stable of portable apps.

Thanks for giving it a go.

Regards,

Kim Wood

I am happy to help with maintenance on future releases if you like. I am also going to give Portable GNUCash 2.2.1 a good work over, and will keep you posted on any bugs found. If you prefer, I can email you direct. Let me know on kim (dot) wood (at) bigpond (dot) net (dot) au

Thanks again, and regards,

Kim Wood

Please post the downloead link !

No testing without download ......

Great, GNUCash certainly now runs portably. However, I can't get it to remember any preference changes. I installed it "vanilla" into a very typical PortableApps directory arrangement - with no special or different directories. I also tried putting the ini file into the /bin directory along with the executable file.

For example, if I choose two line register mode as a default in the Preference dialogue - it will not be invoked in either the current GNUCash session, or any future session.

Anyway - major progress since beta 0.1

Now it's down to the rats & mice problems. Well done.

Regards,

Kim Wood

Some further comments:

GNUCash is quite functional with several exceptions. As noted earlier today, the Preferences don't work. Further, the data file selected is not "sticky". That is, will need to be selected again next time the application is opened (unexpected behavior). Finally, the user is not allowed to add any additional fields on the Accounts screen (ie: account type, account balance, etc...)(unexpected behavior).

Further, I use the application in "double line" mode when in an account. This can be successfully selected from the View menu - and is "sticky" (expected behavior). But as mentioned in my earlier post, cannot be selected as a Register Default from the Preferences menu. Nothing at all can be selected in the preferences menu - the defaults cannot be changed.

I have experimented with different ini file locations, with no luck. I assume that the ini file issue is now the only remaining problem, and has caused all of the issues I am seeing.

These faults are not particularly major - simply just annoying. I will wait for an update before posting again. Very good effort so far.

On a positive note, the help & tutorial work fine. Also, any tabs opened also are "sticky" next time GNUCash is opened (expected behavior). I have tried the new 0.2 beta on a completely clean PC, and there is now no doubt GNUCash is portable.

Regards,

Kim Wood

I have been using the Windows 2.2.1 latest version, and the preferences certainly do work. Your experience is different to mine. Could your version be corrupted or missing some component? Do you have access to another machine to download a fresh copy of the non-portable windows version & try it out?

Regards,

Kim Wood

I can open the desktop version on my PC and change the preferences on GNUCash 2.2.1 - but if I open the portable version on the same XP machine with the same data file, I cannot change the preferences. VMWare bug? Anything else on your machine?

Kim Wood

Works fine. Well done.

The GNUCash bugs I had seen in the earlier beta's are gone. This application works exactly as it should. The load time from my Cruzer 4Gb USB stick is o/k too. This is a very nice app - highly recommended for anyone wanting a great Quicken replacement.

No worries - I will test it thoroughly. Compressing it would be good. Otherwise, I think you are done.

Regards,

App doesn't launch and I get an error that "gnucash-bin can't be found". I looked in the .nsi script and there's no obvious typos.

BTW: UPXing this whole thing using the "--best" switch reduces the footprint from 201MB to 123MB.

Before anyone tears their hair out... GnuCash doesn't work on Vista yet (portable or not). Seems it has something to do with networking as people have found that disabling networking will get it to work. The Vista install base is small but I thought I'd mention the caveat.

I'm interested to see your progress on this as I have been working on it on my own as well. I've got the registry entries dynamically loading but the environment variables set by the batch files are troubling me.

I have installed & tested the Portable GNUcash beta 0.4 today in a vanilla PortableApps directory structure. Everything works as it should, including the help files & tutorial. It looks like this app is now ready for release. You have done a great job in quickly getting the bugs out of the the earlier beta releases.

This application should be strongly considered for inclusion into the standard suite of Portable Apps. As I have said before, it is a Quicken-killer!

HINT: Run it in two-line register mode, with horizontal & vertical lines turned off. It looks a lot like the Quicken register.

It is not at all complex to use, and the XML data file runs happily with either Linux or Windows GNUcash versions. I have ditched Quicken for GNUcash, as it is actually a better product.

IllusionofDemise, I am looking forward to your future projects. Thanks for this one.

When you're done with this app, are you going to get rid of the \Log\gnucash.trace stuff or does that have to stay in there for some reason?

I figured that was in there for you while developing it and end users could care less about trace files.

Add an \App\AppInfo\appicon.ico (make another copy of the program icon, rename it, and stick it in there)

The "more correct" place to put your source files are in \Other\Source now. Ryan just posted that nugget within the last few days. See the DOSBoxPortable directory structure for a reference.

I'm downloading now and will check after for full compatibility. If so, we'll probably want to add this to the outside pre-releases list.

Edit Ouch, I think there are a few too many environment variables, but it's pretty much all good. However, I think John should take a look for himself, as I can't give a solid recommendation.

I know there is supposed to be some setup the first time the application starts, but I'm not making it that far. As soon as the application tries to start I get this error:

"An error occurred while loading or saving configuration information for gnucash. Some of your configuration settings may not work properly."

When I click on the details button I get some additional info:

"Adding client to server's list failed, CORBA error: IDL:omg.org/CORBA/COMM_FAILURE:1.0
Adding client to server's list failed, CORBA error: IDL:omg.org/CORBA/COMM_FAILURE:1.0
Adding client to server's list failed, CORBA error: IDL:omg.org/CORBA/COMM_FAILURE:1.0
Adding client to server's list failed, CORBA error: IDL:omg.org/CORBA/COMM_FAILURE:1.0
Adding client to server's list failed, CORBA error: IDL:omg.org/CORBA/COMM_FAILURE:1.0"

I though maybe it was a network issue but this happened at work and at home.

GnucashPortable seems to work very well.

Is it possible to run it in other languages than english? The locale files seems to be there but i havn't found the place where to set the LANG variable like in GimpPortable.

Any hints?

Markus

My Suites need a good financial management client.

I seem to have issues with the download file, can some one else check to let me know if they can download it?

I downloaded and installed GNUCash 2.2.1 onto a 1 Gb flashdrive (not a U3). The install went fine and I then attempted to run GNUCash.
The flashscreen came up with the GNUCash name/logo but that's about all that happened. A review of the processes running on the machine (IBM Thinkpad X40) indicated that there was a GNUCash file running but there was nothing "visible", i.e. after the flashscreen disappeared nothing much happened.
I will try it again on my "big" machine [Pentium 4 3.2 GHz, 3 Gb RAM, 500 Gb Hard Drive] to see what happens, but thought I'd best report this.

I installed the Portable version of GnuCash on my USB Based drive. I've tried it on 2 different PCs,one running win/2000 and another running win/xp and it comes up fine. However when I try to link to my bank account to download transactions, I get an error message. GnuCash tells me that External Program AqBanking is not found!

Raja

I just uploaded a torrent, so all people can just download the torrent and share their local copy.
http://linuxtracker.org/torrents-details.php?id=4789
http://www.mininova.org/tor/956740

If some other people want to provide a FTP or HTTP mirror, I will create an appropriate Metalink download file for automatic and fastest downloading.

For those of you receiving errors when GnucashPortable starts up, check and see if a registry entry exists at HKLM->Software->Gnucash. If this exists, the program will use the path entries within instead of those set in the environment variables by the launcher. The registry entries are created if you install the non-portable version. If you still have it installed, the portable version seems to work since it uses the files in the non-portable version. If you uninstall it however, that's when the errors crop up since those paths no longer exist.

I'd suggest a change in the launcher renaming the registry folder if it exists before the app starts, and changing it back afterward.

downloaded the following version: GnuCashPortable-2.2.1Beta4.paf and it only worked once.......very time i try to run it won't even run.......I think ya better let Mike & his crack team take a peek at it so they can get it up to Portable Apps Quality.......

I'm getting the following error when I run the install:

The NTVDM CPU has encountered an illegal instruction.
CS:0e30IP:0141 OP:63 65 3d 22 48

I have GnuCash installed on my laptop wich is running Fedora. When I want to open a file saved under Linux into Gnucash portable is crashes. The Gnucash-bin.exe generates an error. I am able to open the saved file on another machine which is running Gnucash under Ubuntu. When I want to open the same file on a machine which is running windows (with a normal installation of Gnucash) I get the same error.

IllusionofDemise:

Do you need me to keep mirroring the latest version for you? Your download link in the first post craps out and I have people downloading it from my server daily.

Let me know.

Moving forward, I'd suggest signing up for a Sourceforge account. It's easy.

Sorry, i didn't read all posts.

I have been trying out GNUCash to both Beta test it and to get to know it. One "problem" (not a deal breaker, merely an annoyance) is that when I switch from one machine to the next sometimes my flash drive is E:, sometimes F:, etc.
When I start up GNUCash and the drive letter isn't the same on the machine I'm on as it was on the previous machine it can't find my account files (i.e. it's looking for G:\PortableApps\... when it should be looking into the E: drive).
I can find the data files by browsing, just think it would be easier not to have the full path name saved when you save a file.

Paulf