Ledger: Command-Line Accounting

Ledger is a powerful, double-entry accounting system that is accessed from the UNIX command-line. This may put off some users, since there is no flashy UI, but for those who want unparalleled reporting access to their data there are few alternatives.

For the Impatient

I know, you just want to build and play. If you have all the dependencies installed (see below), then simply do this:

git clone git://github.com/jwiegley/ledger.git
cd ledger && ./acprep && make check

Now try your first ledger command:

./ledger -f doc/sample.dat reg

To the Rest

If you’re reading this file, you have in your hands the Bleeding Edge. This may very well not be what you want, since it’s not guaranteed to be in a functionally complete state. It’s under active development, and may change in any way at any time.

What you may prefer is the current stable release, or the current beta branch. The BETA is what I prefer people use, since I still have a chance to fix major bugs that you find. Just e-mail me, or post to the mailing list, they’ll become a part of my work list.

There are also several topic branches which contain experimental features, though none of these are guaranteed to compile. Best to chat with me on IRC or via the mailing list before going too much further with those.

Dependencies

If you wish to proceed in this venture, you’ll need a few dependencies:

For building the current master branch

For building the beta or release branches

MacPorts

If you build stuff using MacPorts, as I do, here is what you would run:

sudo port install boost +python25+st gmp mpfr gettext libedit \
     cppunit texlive doxygen graphviz texinfo lcov            \
     sloccount pcre libofx expat

You can even just install the current Ledger RELEASE directly:

sudo port install ledger

Ubuntu

If you’re going to be build on Ubuntu, sudo apt-get install ... the following packages (current as of Ubuntu Hardy):

sudo apt-get install build-essential libtool autoconf automake   \
     texinfo python-dev zlib1g-dev libbz2-dev stow libgmp3-dev   \
     bjam libboost1.35-dev libboost-regex1.35-dev                \
     libboost-date-time1.35-dev libboost-filesystem1.35-dev

Preparing the Build

The next step is preparing your environment for building. While you can use autogen.sh, I’ve prepared a script that does a lot more of the footwork for you:

./acprep

Please read the contents of config.log if the configure step fails. Also, see the help command to acprep, which explains some of its many options. It’s pretty much the only command I run for configuring, building and testing Ledger.

Building

Once you have the dependencies installed and the source prepared for building, run make check to get things started and confirm the result.

If you have extra CPU cycles to burn, try ./acprep proof, which provides the most thorough shakedown of a healthy source tree.

Resources

Now that you’re up and running, here are a few resources to keep in mind:

If you have ideas you’d like to share, the best way is either to e-mail me a patch (I prefer attachments over pasted text), or to get an account on GitHub. Once you do, fork the Ledger project, hack as much as you like, then send me a pull request via GitHub.