hledger/doc/ANNOUNCE

iHappy New Year all! I'm very pleased to announce hledger 1.5.

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.

A big thank you to the release contributors:

Dmitry Astapov,
Mykola Orliuk,
Eli Flanagan,
Elijah Caine,
Sam Jeeves,
Matthias Kauer,
Hans-Peter Deifel,
Mick Dekkers,
Nadrieril,
Alvaro Fernando García.

In 2017, four quarter-end releases were shipped on schedule, 
and our feature set, marketing reach and contributor activity 
continue to grow. The next release is scheduled for 2018/03/31.

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).
Our IRC channel is #hledger on Freenode (http://irc.hledger.org).

What's new ?
------------

Some highlights from the release notes at http://hledger.org/release-notes#hledger-1.5 :

* Ledger-style automated posting rules to modify transactions, enabled
  with --auto flag

* Ledger-style periodic transaction rules to generate forecast
  transactions (--forecast) and budget goals

* a new budget report (balance --budget) comparing amounts with
  per-period and per-account budget goals

* more expressive period expressions

* space can be used as digit group separator character in numbers

* commodity or default commodity directives give more control over
  display precision and decimal point/digit group separator

Get started
-----------

See http://hledger.org/download for all install methods.  Windows
users can download nightly binaries.  On other platforms, you may need
to build the latest release yourself.  The easiest and most reliable
way is to run the hledger install script.  This requires only bash and
will install the hledger tools in $HOME/.local/bin/.  (It uses an
installed cabal or stack if possible, otherwise installs stack and GHC
in $HOME/.local/bin and $HOME/.stack/).  Here's the responsible way to
run it:

$ 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)

or the more convenient, less secure way:

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

or, to install individual tools:

$ stack install hledger-lib-1.5 hledger-1.5  # hledger-ui-1.5 hledger-web-1.5 hledger-api-1.5 etc.

or:

$ cabal update
$ cabal install hledger-1.5  # hledger-ui-1.5 hledger-web-1.5 hledger-api-1.5 etc.

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.

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 http://hledger.org/step-by-step.html

Or review the fine documents, presentations etc. 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


Wishing you a highly prosperous and serene 2018,

-Simon