A bunch of bugs were marked as duplicates, so this is the one that won out:
https://bugs.gnucash.org/show_bug.cgi?id=619119

Bugs have been moved, so this one got moved to here now:
https://bugs.gnucash.org/show_bug.cgi?id=638858

Still a good idea.

Back on March 1, 2011 the Admin comment above says:
The idea is well explained. The developers need to decide who’s going to work on this and when, but this idea will be considered in the near future.

Now, six years later, what happened to "near future"

The following files are in the "books" directory:

Name.YYYYMMDDXXXXXX.gnucash
Name.YYYYMMDDXXXXXX.gnucash.YYYYMMDDXXXXXX.log
Name.YYYYMMDDXXXXXX.gnucash.YYYYMMDDXXXXXX.gnucash

Is there a way to configure either of the following?
1) each file type to be in a separate directory.
2) the most recent of each to be in one directory and the remaining to be in a "books archive" directory

Having all these filed jumbled together is not user friendly.

Corresponding Bugzilla item: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=638858

Yes I would definitely like to be able to put log files and backup files into a sub-directory (maybe called LOGS) in order to remove them from the main folder where the main .gnucash file is stored.

Would like this to be a networked folder too.

These backup files could be placed by default inside a Backup folder next to the gnucash file to avoid polluting the gnucash folder and confusing users. This would already solve most problems reported here in the comments.

Yes, I would like to be able to specify a different directory for the .log files as they they completely overtake the gnucash directory especially when you have several different companies setup.

David--

no one disputes the usefulness of .log and .xac files--just their location on the hard drive. The proliferation of backup files in a user's main data directory can be annoying at best, and lead to new users erroneously opening backups at worst.

While the names are longer, the naming convention places the timestamp immediately following the base filename and before the 'gnucash' extension, which means they sort ahead of the main file.

Placing these files in a separate Backup folder would largely eliminate these problems.

David T.

Those .log files are a part of the backup strategy as they track changes since the previous backup. They should be disappearing on the same schedule that you set for the backup files. Since all those files have longer filenames than your data file, they should usually be further down the list than your data file

https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=638858

Hi,

I used GnuCash for sometimes, and found it generates a lot log
files(XXXX.xml.2010*.txt or .xac) in the same directory of my account data
file. I have 3 account data file for different purpose, When I look the
directory, it's not easily to locate my data file.

Could you let gnucash write those log files into seperate directory?

For example, my data file is on 'accounting' directory, and file name is
'mydata.xml'. Then create a directory 'accounting/mydata.xml.log/', and write
all log files into that folder. It will make the account data folder much
clean.

Thanks.