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 v2.6.2b origin/v2.6.2b

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 v2.6.1

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 (aka 3.0) 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.

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

  - Boost 1.35 or higher -- if you're building DEVEL
  - Python 2.4 or higher -- optional
  - GMP 4.2.2            -- for all builds
  - MPFR 2.4.0           -- for all builds
  - libofx 0.8.3         -- optional

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

  - cppunit 1.12.1       -- if you're building DEVEL
  - lcov 1.6             -- optional, for "make report"
  - doxygen 1.5.7.1      -- optional, for "make docs"
  - texinfo 4.13         -- optional, for "make docs"

* MacPorts

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

  sudo port install boost +python25+st
  sudo port install gmp mpfr pcre libofx
  sudo port install cppunit doxygen texlive texinfo lcov

You can even just install the current Ledger release directly:

  sudo port install ledger

* Ubuntu

If you're going to be build on Ubuntu, "sudo apt-get install ..." the
following packages (current 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

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

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

  ./acprep

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

  ./acprep --devel --boost SUFFIX

Where SUFFIX is the letters that occur after "libboost_regex-SUFFIX.a" in your
library directory.  It might be "mt", or "xgcc40", or "st", etc.

Please read the contents of 'config.log' if the configure step fails.

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

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

If you have extra CPU cycles to burn, perhaps try 'make release-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, 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 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.

John