Annually I export from my online tree from Ancestry clean it up using GRAMPS and then reload to Ancestry.
However this year GRAMPS 5.1.6 (my stable working system) fails to recognise the .ged file and the only reason I can see for this is that the GEDCOM version is 5.5.1, which does import into GRAMPS 5.2.3 (on my trial system)
Is this known bug is there a simple hack to fix this
phil
GRAMPS: 5.1.6
Python: 3.12.3 (main, Nov 6 2024, 18:32:19) [GC…
BSDDB: 6.2.9 (5, 3, 28)
sqlite: 3.45.1 (2.6.0)
LANG: en_GB.UTF-8
OS: Linux
Distribution: 6.8.0-49-generic
How do you mean that it doesn’t recognize it? Does Gramps not start when you double click the Ancestry GEDCOM, or do you see specifiic error messages when you try to import it into an empty tree?
Gramps 5.1.6 is fully capable of reading GEDCOM 5.5.1, and works well here, with files from Ancestry and other online services.
Perhaps we can take a look at the GitHub commit history for gramps/plugins/importer/importgedcom.py.
Gramps 5.1.6 was released 29 June 2023. So the 5.2.3 differences would be all the commits between then and 13 July 2024.
Enno
It does not work either way
If GRAMPS is open and I Import get the error message .ged not recognised
If GRAMPS not open run the .ged get the same error although GRAMPS is shown as a program that can open it yet on 5.2.3 it works and I am sure last year it worked on 5.1.? not sure when I updated from prior version
No great panic just thought I would ask if anybody else had come across this as it is the only time I use GEDCOM
Phil
There’s another possibility… one that seems likely… that Ancestry changed their GEDCOM export since last year.
Could you check importing the new GEDCOM into a fresh tree with the 5.1.6 release ?
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I did an export today, and that GEDCOM imported fine, in 5.1.6.
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I just ran another test on Windows, with 5.1.5 AIO, and that recognized the Ancestry GEDCOM too.
I haven’t looked at the code yet, but AFAIK, the import is a two step process, which starts by looking at the file extension, to decide which importer to use. And then, when the importer starts, it does a check of the file contents, to see whether it’s a genuine GEDCOM file. This means that if I rename a random text file to .ged, and try to import that, Gramps will tell me that the GEDCOM is damaged. And that’s not what you see, right?
Your error message suggests that somehow, your 5.1.6 does not recognize the .ged extension, and that’s very weird.
Would you mind checking whether reinstalling helps?
I’m always experimenting, and a few weeks ago, I found that Gramps 5.1.6 can read 5.2.3 backups. That looks a bit weird, because I expected those to have a newer schema version, and the importer checking for that, but it actually works on a backup from a fresh converted database. And maybe that is, because I did not actually use 5.2 features, so that there were no actual 5.2 data structures in the backup file.
Anyway, if your Gramps works the same as mine, which still remains to be seen, you can do the GEDCOM import in 5.2.3, back it up in .gramps format, and read that backup back into your 5.1.6.
Thanks Enno Brian for all your thoughts it will be Sunday when I get
peace and quiet and a chance to look at this issue.
The only thing I have done is update from Ubuntu 22.04 to 24.04 in the
interim which has generated a number of issues in other areas.
Phil
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OK, I’m looking forward to your update.
In the mean time, I did some checks with a fresh Ubuntu 24.04 with Gramps 5.1.6 installed through the standard software manager, and that works normal with my Ancestry GEDCOM.
What are your issues with Ubuntu 24.04? The ones that I expect are add-on dependencies, caused by liibrary upgrades coming from Debian 12, which I have in LMDE 6 too, and other ones may be the removal of Flatpak support, which can be corrected. Ubuntu promotes snap now, and I noticed that they install Firefiox as a snap package too now.
I moved from Ubuntu to Mint when Canonical introduced Unity, a desktop that triggered the exact opposite of its name, and have tried both the Ubuntu based standard Mint, and the Debian based LMDE, and use the latter now, to avoid problems introduced with Ubuntu 24.04.
Suspect it maybe using the upgrade option to 24.04 from 22.04 doing a clean install 24.04 and will get back to you.
Thunderbird & Firefox are now both on snaps and snaps is a pain. I am in throws of reverting back to apt repositories which should be straight forward according to the experts but is not. I use Mate as my desktop Gnome/Unity out of the box are awful.
Can you still use the “apt” repositories on Mint rather than snaps? Because I might be tempted to seriously look at moving back to Debian again
phil
Mainstream Mint is based on the same 24.04, without snap, and with full support for apt and Flatpak. It comes in 3 flavors, with Cinnamon, MATE, and Xfce, and its MATE looks better than the one distributed by Canonical. All flavors have a start menu at the bottom left.
The one I use is LMDE, which has no ubuntu at all, but has the same support for apt and Flatpak, and only comes in Cinnamon flavor. It’s based on Debian 12 (bookworm), but I find it much easier to use than Debian itself.
Both versions have full support for the .deb files that we have on our site(s).
Good News & Bad News
Bad News Ubuntu 24.04 still no luck with importing GEDCOM no idea why
life is too short for this nonsense
Good News Installed LMDE and GRAMPS and guess what worked first time
Need a little time for evaluation will then look to update my working
system.
Got all my old hacks working on 5.2.3. so may go for broke
Thanks for your help
phil
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Thanks very much Enno for the tip about LMDE 6 took a little getting used to particularly the Panels but now up and running on my working system
Phil
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