Hello, and welcome to the Ledger source code!

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.
At this moment, you can get there by one of two commands:

  BETA:     git checkout -b v2.6.1b origin/v2.6.1b

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.

  RELEASE:  git checkout v2.6.0.90

This is the same release code that you can download via tarball from the home
page.  It has some serious issues dealing with date/time handling, but at
least its major flaws are mostly known by now.

You can jump over to the current active development at any time by using this
command:

  DEVEL:    git checkout master

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

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now, if you wish to proceed in this venture, you'll need a few dependencies:

  - GMP 4.2.2         -- for all builds

  - PCRE 7.7          -- if you're building BETA or RELEASE

  - Boost 1.35        -- if you're building DEVEL
  - CppUnit 1.12.1    -- if you're building DEVEL

  - Optionally, Python 2.4 or higher
  - Optionally, libofx

* MacPorts

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

  sudo port install boost +complete+python25
  sudo port install gmp pcre cppunit libofx

* Ubuntu

If you're going to be building with Ubuntu, "sudo apt-get install ..."
the following packages (correct as of Ubuntu Hardy):

  build-essential libtool autoconf automake texinfo python-dev
  zlib1g-dev libbz2-dev stow libgmp3-dev bjam libboost-dev
  libboost-regex-dev libboost-date-time-dev libboost-filesystem-dev


* Using my Git mirrors

Finally, for the convenience of fellow developers on the master (DEVEL)
branch, you may download and build some of these dependencies quite easily.
Just run this command:

  git submodule init
  git submodule update
  cd lib
  make                   # it installs stuff into /usr/local/stow

You'll now have a few extra source installations in /usr/local/stow/,
most importantly Boost and CppUnit.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

The next step is preparing your environment for building.  While you can just
use 'autoreconf -fi', I've prepared a script that does a lot of the footwork
for you:

  ./acprep

If you want to run with complete debugging on, as I do, use this:

  ./acprep --devel

Please read the contents of 'acprep' in this case, especially the section
which documents the --devel option.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Once you have the dependencies installed and the source prepared for building,
just run 'make'.  If you have CppUnit installed, I prefer that you always run
'make fullcheck', as this will verify Ledger against the unit tests, the
Python unit tests (if applicable), and the regression tests, for your
platform.

If you have extra CPU cycles to burn, try even 'make distcheck', which
provides the most thorough shakedown of a healthy source tree.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

  Home page              http://www.newartisans.com/software/ledger.html
  IRC channel		 #ledger on irc.freenode.net
  Mailing List / Forum   http://groups.google.com/group/ledger-cli
  GitHub project page    http://github.com/jwiegley/ledger/tree/master
  Buildbot display	 http://www.newartisans.com:9090
  Ohloh code analysis	 http://www.ohloh.net/projects/ledger

If you have coding ideas you want to share, the best way is either to e-mail
me a patch (I prefer ttachments 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 message via GitHub asking me to check out your repository.  I'm only
too happy to do so for anyone who takes time out of their schedule to help the
Ledger project.

John