While I suspect that it's possible to stitch XML files together, this is not something I recommend.
What I do recommend is exporting the transactions using the CSV export tool from one and import into the permanent book. > On 08/31/2026 8:41 PM PDT Raymond Maass <[email protected]> wrote: > > > Hi, all. > > Loving Gnucash -- thanks so much for all the development and maintenance to > help make it what it is. > > TL;DR -- Are GUID's for elements (e.g. transactions/splits) in the > xml-formatted save files generated and used such that they are required to > be anything other than simple unique identifiers? I'm not sure if this > makes sense, but I'm worried that, in addition to being unique identifiers, > they may also serve as some sort of check-sum for consistency like I > believe git commits do. > > A few more details: > I'd like to be able to have my wife and me both able to interact with our > joint gnucash file via a hosted git repository as a way to > (a) track history with a bit more detail than the auto-generated backup > files > (b) allow us to both work on the same file > > So far, I set gnucash on our two separate computers to each save as xml > without compression, making the git diffs quite readable and enabling merge > conflict resolution to merge changes back into the main branch when > conflicts arise. > > When we have both done some basic work (e.g. entering some transactions), > and then want to merge our files, it is generally a relatively > straightforward process of making sure all the transactions in the xml file > are present in the resulting file. We could also update the transaction > count that is stored in the file, but I've found so far that leaving that > not updated doesn't seem to cause problems (making me wonder what it is > there for). > > I've done a few basic tests where I take a simple file and carry out that > workflow, then reopen the merged file in Gnucash. So far, the result always > seems to be as expected with all separately entered transactions present. > > So my question is whether anyone sees any potential issues with this. One > particular worry that came to mind is about the GUID's in the file. Each > transaction and sub-component like the split lines has a GUID. When I merge > the files, I simply copy the corresponding lines for each transaction into > the merged file with whatever GUID was made on the branch. > > Are the GUIDs generated and subsequently used in any way that might cause > consistency problems later such as a checksum of the save file at the state > they were added? Or am I okay as long as they're all unique, even if they > were generated and manually merged from, effectively, two different gnucash > files (from branches)? > > Bonus question: > Is there a particular algorithm for generating valid GUID's, or can they be > any (unique) valid string with the allowed characters? I'm somewhat > interested in the idea of programmatically adding elements to the xml file, > and this would be a consideration in doing so. > > Thanks, > Ray > _______________________________________________ _______________________________________________ gnucash-user mailing list [email protected] To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user ----- Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
