Which SQLlite tools to use with a gramps.db file?

(Gramps version 5.13 and Windows)

I am trying to do some intentional damage to an example Tree so I can get some screen captures of some of the repair tools to put in the wiki.

Can anyone recommend a Windows tool to edit our SQLite files?

I’ve started with DB Browser for SQLite

Does the Generate Testcases for Persons and Families tool in the debug menu help with this?

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Thanks!

That looks like it has potential. (Good thing because the Check and Repair Database has been stuck At 90% in the ‘Looking for empty people records’ stage for several hours now. Guess my corruption was a little too effective.)

I haven’t ever used the debug options… something new to learn!

No joy after a couple hours of experiments & installing the current Python.

I can’t seem to get the Debug menu active with CLI options in the Wiki.

By the way, the term “LOGGER_NAME” [shown in the CLI help] seems to be a parameter common to several Linux applications. But I can’t find a definition. In Windows, I’d expect that to be a specific log parsing application. Does it mean a log filename instead?

One work around is to modify the gramps/plugins/tool/toolsdebug.gpr.py file by replacing all instances of category = TOOL_DEBUG, with category = TOOL_UTILS, or one of the other choices from gramps/plugins/tool/tools.gpr.py file.

Probably would be handy if this menu is available as a preference option eg: turn on debug menu etc…!

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On Windows, in the Gramps installation directory, you can start in debug mode by using grampsd.exe. And then look under Tools->Debug.

Caution that debug mode is not intended for normal activities, it is possible to corrupt the DB files that are in use. Care must be taken to not start multiple instances of Gramps (unless you are debugging in that area). Don’t risk your DB, always use a debugging copy of your DB.

In this case use debug mode to create your test cases and then exit Gramps and start normally.

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That worked! I was able to get a sample of the text output from the Check & Repair Database tool by launching the Windows debug version.

Now on to improving the Wiki to recommend using the debug version with that tool. The extra information is lost through the GUI version.

Is there a similar variant for Linux? Or maybe the debug flag works better there? And how about for the Mac?

My memory is that for Linux/Mac version you need to use the command line options.

Any recommendation regarding use of debug needs strong cautions and should be limited to people with software developer experience. It quite easy to forget you are using debug and corrupt valuable data or otherwise make it unrecoverable. In the modern era, most general users expect programs to warn them before doing dangerous things, DEBUG mode CAN NOT be relied on to do this, in fact, it is disabling some protections in-order to allow developers to investigate issues.

In principal, I agree.

In practice, the tool lacking identification of the repaired records is untenable. It denies the Genealogist any opportunity to revalidate the damaged record.

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