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GnuCash 2.6.x README file. | |
The last known stable series is the 2.6.0 series. | |
------------------------------------------------------------ | |
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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. |