
                          Welcome to Ledger

                 the command-line accounting program

Introduction
============

Ledger is an accounting program which is invoked from the command-line using a
textual ledger file.  To start using Ledger, you will need to create such a
file containing your financial postings.  A sample has been provided in the
file "sample.dat".  See the documentation (ledger.pdf, or ledger.info) for
full documentation on creating a ledger file and using Ledger to generate
reports.

Once you have such a file -- you might call it "ledger.dat" -- you can start
looking at balances and account registers using commands like the following:

  ledger -f ledger.dat balance assets:checking
  ledger -f ledger.dat register expenses:food

This assumes, of course, that like the sample file you use account names such
as "Assets:Checking" and "Expenses:Food".  If you use other account names, you
will need to vary the reporting commands you use accordingly.


Building
========

To build Ledger, you will need a fairly modern C++ compiler (gcc 2.95 will not
work), and at least these two libraries installed:

    gmp        GNU multi-precision library
    pcre       Perl regular expression library

(On some GNU/Linux systems, the packages you need to install are called
"gmp-dev" and "pcre-dev").

Once you have determined where the headers and libraries for the above
packages are installed, run the script "configure", passing those paths.  If
you installed everything under /usr/local, you can probably just type
"./configure".  Otherwise, do this:

    ./configure CPPFLAGS=-I<INCLUDE-PATH>  LDFLAGS=-L<LIBRARY-PATH>

If you need to specify multiple include or library paths, then do this:

    ./configure CPPFLAGS="-I<PATH1> -I<PATH2>"  LDFLAGS="-L<PATH1> -L<PATH2>"

Once configure is done running, just type:

    make install


Mailing List and IRC
====================

If you need help on how to use Ledger, or run into problems, you can join the
Ledger mailing list at the following Web address:

    http://groups.google.com/group/ledger-cli

You can also find help at the #ledger channel on the IRC server
irc.freenode.net.
