added README file

README

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+Welcome to Ledger, a command-line accounting program.
+
+Quick start
+===========
+
+To build ledger, you will first need these two libraries installed:
+
+    gmp        GNU multi-precision library
+    pcre       Perl regular expression library
+
+If you wish to read Gnucash data files, you will also need two XML libraries,
+which may or may not be available in a single package (it depends on your
+distribution):
+
+    xmlparse
+    xmltok
+
+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
+
+Building on OS/X
+================
+
+If you are building ledger for OS/X, there are a couple of things you can do
+to ensure that it runs as quickly as possible.  First, you will want to
+configure ledger using this command, which you can cut and paste from here:
+
+    ./configure CPPFLAGS="-I/sw/include -I/usr/include/httpd/xml" \
+		LDFLAGS=-L/sw/lib \
+		CXXFLAGS="-fomit-frame-pointer -fastf -mcpu=7450" \
+		--enable-standalone
+
+Next, if you are interested, we need to change the system headers so that
+command-line ledger can use an STL allocator that is not thread-safe.  Being
+hread-safe has no benefit for the standalone, command-line version of ledger,
+and so is needlessly 10% slower.  However, there is no easy way to do this,
+other than modifying the system headers.  So, sudo over to a root shell, and
+edit this file:
+
+  /usr/include/gcc/darwin/3.3/c++/bits/stl_alloc.h
+
+Around line 617, you will find a typedef declaration that looks like this:
+
+  typedef __default_alloc_template<true,0>    __alloc;
+
+Replace this line with the following block, which will permit the ledger
+sources to select a different default allocator:
+
+  #ifdef SGI_STL_USE_SINGLE_CLIENT_ALLOCATOR
+    typedef __default_alloc_template<false,0>   __alloc;
+  #else
+    typedef __default_alloc_template<true,0>    __alloc;
+  #endif 
+
+The disadvantage to doing this, in general, is that an app using a different
+default will not be able to link to other C++ libraries, which use another
+default.  But since ledger doesn't use any C++ libraries, this is no problem.