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.

Ledger uses text files for input. It reads the files and generates reports; there is no other database or stored state. To use Ledger, you create a file of your account names and transactions, run from the command line with some options to specify input and requested reports, and get output. The output is generally plain text, though you could generate a graph or html instead. Ledger is simple in concept, surprisingly rich in ability, and easy to use.

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/ledger/ledger.git
cd ledger && ./acprep update  # Update to the latest, configure, make

Now try your first ledger command:

./ledger -f test/input/sample.dat reg

For help on keeping your journal have a look at the documentation and the wiki (Also see the “Resources” section at the end of this file). An emacs mode for ledger files can be found in the lisp directory and a vim plugin is located in the ledger/vim-ledger repository.

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.

RELEASE	git checkout v2.6.3
CURRENT	git checkout maint
BETA	git checkout -b master origin/master
ALPHA	git checkout -b next origin/next

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. The easiest way to get them for your platform is to run this handy Python script:

./acprep dependencies

If that doesn't completely work, here are the dependencies for building the current master branch:

Boost	1.35
GMP	4.2.2
MPFR	2.4.0
utfcpp	2.3.4
gettext	0.17	optional
libedit	20090111-3.0	optional
Python	2.4	optional
doxygen	1.5.7.1	optional, for make docs
graphviz	2.20.3	optional, for make docs
texinfo	4.13	optional, for make docs
lcov	1.6	optional, for make report, used with /./acprep gcov
sloccount	2.26	optional, for make sloc

And for building the current maint branch:

GMP	4.2.2
pcre	7.7
libofx	0.8.3	optional
expat	2.0.1	optional
libxml2	2.7.2	optional

MacPorts

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

sudo port install -f cmake python26
    libiconv +universal zlib +universal gmp +universal
    mpfr +universal ncurses +universal ncursesw +universal
    gettext +universal libedit +universal boost-jam
    boost +st+python26+icu texlive doxygen graphviz
    texinfo lcov sloccount

Ubuntu

If you're going to build on Ubuntu, sudo apt-get install ... the following packages (current as of Ubuntu 12.04):

sudo apt-get install build-essential cmake zlib1g-dev libbz2-dev
     python-dev gettext libgmp3-dev libmpfr-dev libboost-dev
     libboost-regex-dev libboost-date-time-dev
     libboost-filesystem-dev libboost-python-dev texinfo lcov
     sloccount libboost-iostreams-dev libboost-test-dev

Or, for Ubuntu Karmic:

sudo apt-get install build-essential cmake texinfo python-dev zlib1g-dev
     libbz2-dev libgmp3-dev bjam gettext cvs libboost-dev
     libboost-regex-dev libboost-date-time-dev
     libboost-filesystem-dev libmpfr-dev

Debian

Debian squeeze (6.0): the version of boost in squeeze is too old for ledger and unfortunately no backport is available at the moment.

Debian wheezy (7.0) contains all components needed to build ledger. You can install all required build dependencies using the following command:

sudo apt-get install build-essential cmake autopoint texinfo python-dev \
     zlib1g-dev libbz2-dev libgmp3-dev gettext libmpfr-dev \
     libboost-date-time-dev libboost-filesystem-dev \
     libboost-graph-dev libboost-iostreams-dev \
     libboost-python-dev libboost-regex-dev libboost-test-dev

Building

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

./acprep update
# or, if you want to use the Boost libraries with suffix -mt, install in
# $HOME/local and build with 2 processes in parallel
./acprep update --boost-suffix=-mt --prefix=$HOME/local -j2

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

You can run make check to confirm the result, and make install to install.

Resources

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

• Home page
• Documentation
• IRC channel
• Mailing List / Forum
• GitHub project page
• Ohloh code analysis

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.