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| ############################################################ | |
| GnuCash 2.6.x README file. | |
| The last known stable series is the 2.6.0 series. | |
| ------------------------------------------------------------ | |
| ################## | |
| Table of Contents: | |
| ------------------ | |
| - Overview | |
| - Dependencies | |
| - Invocation/running | |
| - Internationalization | |
| - Building & Installing | |
| - Supported Platforms | |
| - Additional Download Sites | |
| - Getting the Source via SVN | |
| - Developing GnuCash | |
| ######## | |
| Overview | |
| -------- | |
| GnuCash is a personal finance manager. A check-book like register GUI | |
| allows you to enter and track bank accounts, stocks, income and even | |
| currency trades. A full set of reports allow you to see the state of | |
| your finances. The interface is designed to be simple and easy to use, | |
| but is backed with double-entry accounting principles to ensure | |
| balanced books. | |
| Features include: | |
| - An easy-to-use interface. If you can use the register in the back | |
| of your checkbook, you can use GnuCash. Type directly into the | |
| register, tab between fields, and use quick-fill to automatically | |
| complete the transaction. | |
| - Scheduled Transactions: GnuCash has the ability to automatically | |
| create and enter transactions, remind when a transaction is due, | |
| give a choice of entering a transaction or postponing it and | |
| remove an automated transaction after a certain period. | |
| - Mortgage & Loan Repayment Assistant: Used to setup a variable | |
| payment loan scheduled transaction. | |
| - Small Business Accounting Features: GnuCash can be used | |
| for Customer and Vendor tracking, Invoicing and Bill Payment, | |
| and using different Tax and Billing Terms in a small business. | |
| - OFX Import: GnuCash can import downloaded OFX/QFX files and | |
| retrieve account info and transactions via OFXDirect. The results | |
| are passed through a transaction matching system that accurately | |
| picks duplicate transactions and assigns contra accounts based on | |
| similar previously-imported transactions. | |
| - HBCI Support: GnuCash also supports the German Home Banking | |
| Computer Interface protocol which includes statement download, | |
| initiate bank transfers and direct debits. | |
| - Quicken File Import: Import Quicken QIF style files. QIF files | |
| are automatically merged to eliminate duplicate transactions. | |
| - Reconcile window with running reconciled and cleared balances | |
| makes reconciliation easy. | |
| - Stock/Mutual Fund Portfolios: Track stocks individually (one per | |
| account) or in portfolio of accounts (a group of accounts that can | |
| be displayed together). | |
| - Get Stock & Mutual Fund quotes from various web sites, update | |
| portfolio automatically (more funds being added regularly). | |
| - Reports: Display Balance Sheet, Profit&Loss, Portfolio Valuation, | |
| Transaction Reports, or account balance tracking, or export them | |
| as HTML. You can write your own custom report if you know a | |
| little Scheme. Reports can be run over any arbitrary period. | |
| - Multiple Currencies & Currency Trading: Multiple currencies are | |
| supported and can be bought and sold (traded). Currency movements | |
| between accounts are fully balanced when double-entry is enabled. | |
| - New Multi-Currency Transaction Handling: GnuCash no longer | |
| requires separate currency exchange accounts to handle multiple | |
| currency transfers. | |
| - Chart of Accounts: A master account can have a hierarchy of detail | |
| accounts underneath it. This allows similar account types | |
| (e.g. Cash, Bank, Stock) to be grouped into one master account | |
| (e.g. Assets). | |
| - Split Transactions: A single transaction can be split into several | |
| pieces to record taxes, fees, and other compound entries. | |
| - Double Entry: Every transaction must debit one account and credit | |
| another by an equal amount. This ensures that the "books | |
| balance": that the difference between income and outflow exactly | |
| equals the sum of all assets, be they bank, cash, stock or other. | |
| - Income/Expense Account Types (Categories): These serve not only to | |
| categorize your cash flow, but when used properly with the | |
| double-entry feature, these can provide an accurate Profit&Loss | |
| statement. | |
| - General Ledger: Multiple accounts can be displayed in one register | |
| window at the same time. This can ease the trouble of tracking | |
| down typing/entry errors. It also provides a convenient way of | |
| viewing a portfolio of many stocks, by showing all transactions in | |
| that portfolio. | |
| - Written in C with embedded scheme support via Guile. | |
| - File access is locked in a network-safe fashion, preventing | |
| accidental damage if several users attempt to access the same | |
| file, even if the file is NFS-mounted. | |
| - SQL storage is supported using MySQL, Postgresql, and | |
| SQLite3. Note that this does not support multiple concurrent | |
| access. | |
| Home Page: | |
| http://www.gnucash.org/ | |
| Precompiled binaries: | |
| http://www.gnucash.org/download | |
| ############ | |
| Dependencies | |
| ------------ | |
| The following packages are required to be installed to run GnuCash: | |
| [see README.dependencies] | |
| The optional online stock and currency price retrieval feature requires Perl. This is generally already installed on Gnu/Linux and *BSD, and MacOSX. | |
| In addition, some perl modules need to be installed. You can run the | |
| script 'update-finance-quote' as root to obtain the latest versions of | |
| required packages. This program requires an C compiler, which is | |
| generally already installed in Gnu/Linux and *BSD, but must be | |
| installed separately on MacOSX; on versions 10.6 and earlier, install | |
| Xcode from the distribution DVD or by downloading from | |
| http://developer.apple.com (you'll need to log in with your Apple ID); | |
| for 10.7 and 10.8, you can get Xcode for free from the App store. 10.9 | |
| has a cool feature that detects an attempt to compile and offers to | |
| install the command-line build tools for you. | |
| Microsoft Windows users can use the "Install Online Quotes" program in the Start menu's Gnucash group. | |
| To use the OFX and HBCI import features you need to obtain | |
| the following; | |
| libofx: This library provide support for OFX file imports. | |
| GnuCash-2.0.0 and newer needs at least the version libofx-0.7.0 | |
| or newer. Sources can be found at | |
| http://sourceforge.net/projects/libofx/ | |
| aqbanking: This library provide support for HBCI and openOFX online actions. | |
| Three libraries, Ktoblzcheck, Gwenhywfar, and AQBanking, are required. | |
| All may be obtained from | |
| http://www2.aquamaniac.de/sites/download/packages.php | |
| ####### | |
| Running | |
| ------- | |
| For GnuCash invocation details, see the manpage in doc/gnucash.1. | |
| You can also run gnucash --help for the command line options. | |
| You can start GnuCash at the command-line, with "gnucash" or "gnucash | |
| <filename>", where <filename> is a GnuCash account file. Sample | |
| accounts can be found in the "doc/examples" subdirectory. *.gnucash | |
| files are GnuCash accounts that can be opened with the "Open File" menu entry. | |
| *.qif files are Quicken Import Format files that can be opened with the | |
| "Import QIF" menu entry. | |
| GnuCash responds to the following environment variables: | |
| GNC_BOOTSTRAP_SCM - the location of the initial bootstrapping scheme code. | |
| GUILE_LOAD_PATH - an override for the GnuCash load path, used when | |
| loading scheme files. It should be a string in the same form as the | |
| PATH or LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable. | |
| GNC_MODULE_PATH - an override for the GnuCash load path, used when | |
| loading gnucash modules. It should be a string representing a | |
| proper scheme list. It should be a string in the same form as the | |
| PATH or LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable. | |
| GNC_DEBUG - enable debugging output. This allows you to turn on | |
| debugging earlier in the startup process than you can with --debug. | |
| #################### | |
| Internationalization | |
| -------------------- | |
| Message catalogs exist for many different languages. In general | |
| GnuCash will use the locale configured in the desktop environment if | |
| we have a translation for it, but this may be overridden if one | |
| likes. Instructions for overriding the locale settings may be found at | |
| http://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Locale_Settings | |
| ##################### | |
| Building & Installing | |
| --------------------- | |
| (For additional build system details, see doc/README.build-system.) | |
| GnuCash uses GNU Automake to handle the build process, so for most of | |
| the details, see the generic instructions in INSTALL. (If you are | |
| building directly from Git, read the README.git file for more instructions.) | |
| >>>>>>> maint | |
| Below we detail the GnuCash specific bits. | |
| Prior to building GnuCash, you will have to obtain and install the | |
| following packages: | |
| autoconf, automake, and libtool: Available at ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu. | |
| RPM's and debs are widely available with most distributions. | |
| gnome development system: headers, libraries, etc. | |
| libxml2: available from ftp.gnome.org | |
| SWIG: 2.0.10 or later is needed. See http://www.swig.org or | |
| http://sourceforge.net/projects/swig/ | |
| What you'll need to get and install in order to make sure you have all | |
| of these pieces properly installed for your particular operating | |
| system flavor will vary, but here's at least a partial list of what | |
| you'll need for the systems we know about: | |
| Debian/GNU/Linux: see README.dependencies and | |
| current: | |
| libgnome-dev | |
| libwebkit-dev | |
| guile1.8 | |
| libguile9-dev | |
| libguile9-slib | |
| SuSE: | |
| see README.dependencies | |
| GnuCash understands a few non-standard ./configure options. You | |
| should run ./configure --help for the most up to date summary of the | |
| supported options. | |
| If you only want a particular language installed, you can set the | |
| LINGUAS environment variable before you run configure. For example, | |
| to only install the French translations, run | |
| $ export LINGUAS=fr | |
| $ ./configure | |
| If you want to make sure that all languages get installed, run | |
| $ unset LINGUAS | |
| $ ./configure | |
| Note that while you need the Gnome libraries installed, you don't | |
| need to have a Gnome desktop. | |
| Runtime and install destinations are separate. The --prefix you | |
| specify to configure determines where the resulting binary will look | |
| for things at runtime. Normally this determines where a "make | |
| install" will put all the files. However, automake also supports the | |
| variable. DESTDIR is used during the `make install' step to relocate | |
| install objects into a staging area. Each object and path is prefixed | |
| with the value of `DESTDIR' before being copied into the install area. | |
| Here is an example of typical DESTDIR usage: | |
| make DESTDIR=/tmp/staging install | |
| This places install objects in a directory tree built under | |
| `/tmp/staging'. If `/gnu/bin/foo' and `/gnu/share/aclocal/foo.m4' are | |
| to be installed, the above command would install | |
| `/tmp/staging/gnu/bin/foo' and `/tmp/staging/gnu/share/aclocal/foo.m4'. | |
| DESTDIR can be helpful when trying to build install images and | |
| packages. | |
| NOTE: If you have installed different parts of Gnome in different | |
| places (for instance, if you've installed webkit in /usr/local) you | |
| will need to set the environment variables GNOME_PATH and | |
| GNOME_LIBCONFIG_PATH. See the manpage for gnome-config for more | |
| details. | |
| ################### | |
| Supported Platforms | |
| ------------------- | |
| GnuCash 2.x is known to work with the following operating systems: | |
| GNU/Linux -- x86, Sparc, PPC | |
| FreeBSD -- x86 | |
| OpenBSD -- x86 | |
| MacOS X -- PPC and Intel, Versions 10.5 and later | |
| GnuCash can probably be made to work on any platform for which Gtk+ can, | |
| given sufficient effort. If you try and encounter difficulty, please join | |
| the developer's mailing list, gnucash-devel@gnucash.org. | |
| ######################### | |
| Downloads | |
| ------------------------- | |
| GnuCash sources and Mac and Windows binaries are hosted at | |
| SourceForge. Links for the current version are provided at | |
| http://www.gnucash.org. We depend upon distribution packagers for | |
| GNU/Linux and *BSD binaries, so if you want a more recent version than | |
| your distribution provides you'll have to build from source. | |
| ############################## | |
| Getting Source with Git | |
| ------------------------------ | |
| We maintain a mirror of our master repository on Github. You can | |
| browse the code at https://github.com/Gnucash/gnucash. Clone URIs are | |
| on that page, or if you have a Github account you can fork it | |
| there. | |
| ################## | |
| Developing GnuCash | |
| ------------------ | |
| Before you start developing GnuCash, you should do the following: | |
| 1. Read http://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Development | |
| 2. Look over the doxygen-generated documentation at | |
| http://code.gnucash.org/docs/HEAD/ | |
| 3. Go to the GnuCash website and skim the archives of the GnuCash | |
| development mailing list. | |
| 4. Join the GnuCash development mailing list. See the GnuCash website | |
| for details on how to do this. | |
| Submitting a Patch: | |
| Please read http://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Development#Submitting_Patches. | |
| Thank you. |