85 lines
2.7 KiB
Text
85 lines
2.7 KiB
Text
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Welcome to Ledger
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the command-line accounting program
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Introduction
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============
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Ledger is an accounting program which is invoked from the command-line
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using a textual ledger file. To start using Ledger, you will need to
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create such a file containing your financial transactions. A sample
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has been provided in the file "sample.dat". See the documentation
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(ledger.pdf, or ledger.info) for full documentation on creating a
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ledger file and using Ledger to generate reports.
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Once you have such a file -- you might call it "ledger.dat" -- you can
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start looking at balances and account registers using commands like
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the following:
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ledger -f ledger.dat balance assets:checking
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ledger -f ledger.dat register expenses:food
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This assumes, of course, that like the sample file you use account
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names such as "Assets:Checking" and "Expenses:Food". If you use other
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account names, you will need to vary the reporting commands you use
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accordingly.
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Building
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========
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To build Ledger, you will need a fairly modern C++ compiler (gcc 2.95
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will not work), and at least these two libraries installed:
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gmp GNU multi-precision library
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pcre Perl regular expression library
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(On some GNU/Linux systems, the packages you need to install are
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called "gmp-dev" and "pcre-dev").
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If you wish to read Gnucash data files, you will also need two XML
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libraries, which may or may not be available in a single package (it
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depends on your distribution):
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libexpat, or libxmlparse and libxmltok
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Once you have determined where the headers and libraries for the above
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packages are installed, run the script "configure", passing those
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paths. If you installed everything under /usr/local, you can probably
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just type "./configure". Otherwise, do this:
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./configure CPPFLAGS=-I<INCLUDE-PATH> LDFLAGS=-L<LIBRARY-PATH>
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If you need to specify multiple include or library paths, then do
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this:
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./configure CPPFLAGS="-I<PATH1> -I<PATH2>" LDFLAGS="-L<PATH1> -L<PATH2>"
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Once configure is done running, just type:
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make install
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Mailing List and IRC
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====================
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If you need help on how to use Ledger, or run into problems, you can
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join the Ledger mailing list at the following Web address:
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https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/ledger-discuss
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You can also find help at the #ledger channel on the IRC server
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irc.freenode.net.
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Building Ledger as a Python Module
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==================================
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If you have Python 2.2 or higher installed, and Boost.Python, then
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Ledger can also be built as a Python module if --enable-python is
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passed to the configure script. This means you can interact with your
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Ledger data from Python, making it easier to write custom reports.
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This feature is mostly undocumented in version 2.0, although main.py
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gives a working example.
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