hledger/doc/ANNOUNCE

hledger (http://hledger.org) is a reliable, cross-platform program for
tracking money, time or other commodities, using double-entry
accounting and simple plain text file formats. It provides
command-line, curses and web interfaces, and aims to be a pleasant and
practical tool for personal, business or institutional use.

I'm pleased to announce hledger 1.9. The version jump signals some
noteworthy changes still landing (normal-positive reports, budget
reporting) which are a kind of preview of 2.0. The next major release,
on 2018/06/30, will be hledger 2.0. Thank you to release contributors:

Eli Flanagan,
Peter Simons,
Christoph Nicolai,
agander,
M Parker,
Moritz Kiefer,
Mykola Orliuk.

Highlights:
-----------

* the "financial statement" commands bs/bse/cf/is now show all normal
balances as positive numbers, producing more conventional financial
reports which are easier to share with others.  (experimental)

* bal/bs/bse/cf/is can now generate HTML reports

* account codes can be used to customize account sorting

* numbers in scientific E-notation are supported, eg in journal and CSV data

* budget report improvements

* general report cleanups

More at http://hledger.org/release-notes#hledger-1.9 .

Get started:
------------

See http://hledger.org/download for all install methods.
Often, to get the latest release you will need to build it.  
Here are some ways to do that:

Using the hledger-install script, which requires only bash and will
build and install the hledger tools in $HOME/.local/bin/.
(Note: building haskell apps can take significant time, memory, and
disk space, especially the first time.  You can kill and restart the
installer without losing progress.  If it fails, please help us
improve it by reporting the full output):

$ curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/simonmichael/hledger/master/hledger-install/hledger-install.sh
$ less hledger-install.sh # (do security review)
$ bash hledger-install.sh # (add -v for more detail; use bash -x to show commands being run)

Using hledger-install the more convenient, less secure way:

$ curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/simonmichael/hledger/master/hledger-install/hledger-install.sh | bash

Using stack:

$ stack install hledger-lib-1.9 hledger-1.9  # hledger-ui-1.9 hledger-web-1.9 hledger-api-1.9

Using cabal:

$ cabal update
$ cabal install hledger-1.9  # hledger-ui-1.9 hledger-web-1.9 hledger-api-1.9

After installation, ensure $HOME/.local/bin is in your $PATH. 
Now try some commands:

$ hledger -h            # quick help
$ hledger help          # list built-in manuals
$ hledger add           # record some transactions
$ hledger               # list available commands

Now perhaps work through the tutorial at 
https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger/wiki/hledger-basics-tutorial.
Or review the fine documents at http://hledger.org and
http://plaintextaccounting.org. Or say hello and ask questions in the 
#hledger IRC channel on Freenode: http://irc.hledger.org.

Get involved:
-------------

New users and contributors are always welcome! Give feedback, report
bugs, send pull requests, write about it, etc.  And if you have been
finding hledger useful, consider becoming a sponsor or donor to help
to sustain and accelerate our progress (see home page).