gramps - Man Page

gramps [-? | --help] [--usage] [--version] [-l] [-L] [-u | --force-unlock] [-O | --open=DATABASE [-f | --format=FORMAT]] [-i | --import=FILE [-f | --format=FORMAT]] [--remove=FAMILY_TREE_PATTERN] [-e | --export=FILE [-f | --format=FORMAT]] [-a | --action=ACTION] [-p | --options=OPTION-STRING]] [FILE] [--version]

Gramps is a Free, Open Source genealogy program. It is written in Python, using the GTK+/GNOME interface. Gramps should seem familiar to anyone who has used other genealogy programs before such as Family Tree Maker™, Personal Ancestral Files™, or the GNU Geneweb. It supports importing of the ever-popular GEDCOM format which is used worldwide by almost all other genealogy software.

gramps FILE

When FILE is given (without any flags) as a family tree name or as a family tree database directory, then it is opened and an interactive session is started. If FILE is a file format understood by Gramps, an empty family tree is created whose name is based on the FILE name, and the data is imported into it. Any other options are ignored. This way of launching is suitable for using gramps as a handler for genealogical data in e.g. web browsers. This invocation can accept any data format native to gramps; see below.

-f, --format=FORMAT

Explicitly specify format of FILE given by preceding -i or -e option. If the -f option is not given for any FILE, the format of that file is guessed according to its extension or MIME type.

Formats available for export are gramps-xml (guessed if FILE ends with .gramps), gedcom (guessed if FILE ends with .ged), or any file export available through the Gramps plugin system.

Formats available for import are gramps-xml, gedcom, gramps-pkg (guessed if FILE ends with .gpkg), and geneweb (guessed if FILE ends with .gw).

Formats available for export are gramps-xml, gedcom, gramps-pkg, wft (guessed if FILE ends with .wft), geneweb.

-l

Print a list of known family trees.

-L

Print a detailed list of known family trees.

-u, --force-unlock

Unlock a locked database.

-O, --open=DATABASE

Open DATABASE which must be an existing database directory or existing family tree name. If no action, import, or export options are given on the command line, then an interactive session is started using that database.

-i, --import=FILE

Import data from FILE. If no database was specified, then an empty database is created called Family Tree x (where x is an incrementing number).

When more than one input file is given, each has to be preceded by a -i flag. The files are imported in the specified order, e.g., -i FILE1 -i FILE2 and -i FILE2 -i FILE1 might produce different gramps IDs in the resulting database.

-e, --export=FILE

Export data into FILE. For gramps-xml, gedcom, wft, gramps-pkg, and geneweb, the FILE is the name of the resulting file.

When more than one output file is given, each has to be preceded by a -e flag. The files are written one by one, in the specified order.

-a, --action=ACTION

Perform ACTION on the imported data. This is done after all imports are successfully completed. Currently available actions are summary (same as Reports→View→Summary), check (same as Tools→Database Processing→Check and Repair), report (generates report), and tool (runs a plugin tool). Both report and tool need the OPTION-STRING supplied by the -p flag).

The OPTION-STRING should satisfy the following conditions:

• It should not contain any spaces.
• If some arguments need to include spaces, the string should be enclosed with quotation marks, following shell syntax.
• The option string is a list of pairs with name and value (separated by an equals sign).
• The name and value pairs must be separated by commas.

Most of the report or tools options are specific for each report or tool. However, there are some common options.

name=name

This mandatory option determines which report or tool will be run. If the supplied name does not correspond to any available report or tool, an error message will be printed followed by the list of available reports or tools (depending on the ACTION).

show=all

This will produce the list of names for all options available for a given report or tool.

show=optionname

This will print the description of the functionality supplied by optionname, as well as what are the acceptable types and values for this option.

Use the above options to find out everything about a given report.

When more than one output action is given, each has to be preceded by a -a flag. The actions are performed one by one, in the specified order.

-d, --debug=LOGGER_NAME

Enable debug logs for development and testing. Look at the source code for details.

--version

Print the version number of gramps and then exits.

If the first argument on the command line does not start with dash (i.e., no flag), gramps will attempt to open the file with the name given by the first argument and start an interactive session, ignoring the rest of the command line arguments.

If the -O flag is given, then gramps will try opening the supplied database and then work with that data, as instructed by the further command line parameters.

With or without the -O flag, further imports, exports, and actions may be specified on the command line by using -i, -e, and -a flags.

The order of -i, -e, or -a options does not matter. The actual order they are processed always is: all imports (if any) → all actions (if any) → all exports (if any). But opening must always be first!

If no -O or -i option is given, gramps will launch its main window and start the usual interactive session with an empty database, since there is no data to process anyway.

If no -e or -a options are given, gramps will launch its main window and start the usual interactive session with the database resulting from all imports. This database resides in the import_db.grdb under the ~/.gramps/import directory.

Any errors encountered during import, export, or action will be dumped either to stdout (if these are exceptions handled by gramps) or to stderr (if these are not handled). Use usual shell redirections of stdout and stderr to save messages and errors to files.

To open an existing family tree and import an xml file into it, one may type:

gramps -O 'My Family Tree' -i ~/db3.gramps

The above changes the opened family tree. To do the same, but import both in a temporary family tree and start an interactive session, one may type:

gramps -i 'My Family Tree' -i ~/db3.gramps

To import four databases (whose formats can be determined from their names) and then check the resulting database for errors, one may type:

gramps -i file1.ged -i file2.tgz -i ~/db3.gramps -i file4.wft -a check

To explicitly specify the formats in the above example, append filenames with appropriate -f options:

gramps -i file1.ged -f gedcom -i file2.tgz -f gramps-pkg \
-i ~/db3.gramps -f gramps-xml -i file4.wft -f wft -a check

To record the database resulting from all imports, supply a -e flag (use -f if the filename does not allow gramps to guess the format):

gramps -i file1.ged -i file2.tgz -e ~/new-package -f gramps-pkg

To import three databases and start an interactive gramps session with the result:

gramps -i file1.ged -i file2.tgz -i ~/db3.gramps

To run the Verify tool from the commandline and output the result to stdout:

gramps -O 'My Family Tree' -a tool -p name= verify

Finally, to start a normal interactive session type:

gramps

The program checks whether these environment variables are set:

LANG

Describe which language to use. E.g., for the Polish language this variable has to be set to pl_PL.UTF-8.

GRAMPSHOME

Force Gramps to use the specified directory to keep program settings and databases in. By default, this variable is not set and gramps assumes that the folder with all databases and profile settings should be created within the user profile folder (described by environment variable HOME for Linux or USERPROFILE for Windows 2000/XP).

CONCEPTS

Supports a python-based plugin system, allowing import and export writers, report generators, tools, and display filters to be added without modification of the main program.

In addition to generating direct printer output, report generators also target other output formats, such as LibreOffice, AbiWord, HTML, or LaTeX to allow the users to modify the format to suit their needs.

Donald Allingham <don@gramps-project.org> https://www.gramps-project.org/

This man page was originally written by: Brandon L. Griffith <brandon@debian.org> for inclusion in the Debian GNU/Linux system.

This man page is currently maintained by: Gramps project <xxx@gramps-project.org>

The user documentation is available through a web browser in the form of the Gramps Manual.

The developer documentation can be found on the https://www.gramps-project.org/wiki/index.php/Portal:Developers portal.