Welcome to Ledger

                 The Command-line Accounting Program

Introduction
============

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.

To start using Ledger, you will need to create such a
file containing your financial transactions.  A sample has been provided in the
file "test/input/sample.dat".  See the Ledger 3 Manual (ledger.pdf, ledger.info, 
or http://www.ledger-cli.org/3.0/doc/ledger3.pdf) for full documentation on creating 
a ledger file and using Ledger to generate reports.

Once you have such a file -- you might call it "ledger.dat" -- you can start
looking at balances and account registers using commands like the following:

  ledger -f ledger.dat balance assets:checking
  ledger -f ledger.dat register expenses:food

This assumes, of course, that like the sample file you use account names such
as "Assets:Checking" and "Expenses:Food".  If you use other account names, you
will need to vary the reporting commands you use accordingly.

You can find more information on getting starting, building from source, and 
getting help from the ./README.md file in your ledger source repository or
online at https://github.com/ledger/ledger.


Building
========

To build Ledger, you will need a fairly modern C++ compiler (gcc 2.95 will not
work), and at least these two libraries installed:

    gmp        GNU multi-precision library
    pcre       Perl regular expression library

On some GNU/Linux systems, the packages you need to install are called
"gmp-dev" and "pcre-dev".  See the ./README.md in the source repository for
a more complete list of dependencies.

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


Mailing List and IRC
====================

If you need help on how to use Ledger, or run into problems, you can join the
Ledger mailing list at the following Web address:

    http://groups.google.com/group/ledger-cli

You can also find help at the #ledger channel on the IRC server
irc.freenode.net.