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############################################################ GnuCash README file.

The current stable series is GnuCash 5.x.

################## Table of Contents:

• Overview
• Dependencies
• Invocation/running
• Internationalization
• Building & Installing
• Supported Platforms
• Additional Download Sites
• Getting the Source via Git
• Developing GnuCash

######## Overview

GnuCash is a personal and small business double entry accounting application.

Home Page: https://www.gnucash.org/

Wiki: https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/GnuCash

Precompiled binaries: https://www.gnucash.org/download

############ Dependencies

Please see README.dependencies for current build dependencies.

The optional online stock and currency price retrieval feature requires Perl. This is generally already installed on Gnu/Linux and *BSD, and MacOS.

In addition, some perl modules need to be installed. You can run the script 'gnc-fq-update' as root to obtain the latest versions of required packages.

Microsoft Windows users can use the "Install Online Quotes" program in the Start menu's Gnucash group; it will install perl and all of the required modules more-or-less automatically. MacOS users will find "Update Finance Quote" in the distribution disk image; it will automate running gnc-fq-update for you.

####### 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 ", where 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 https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Locale_Settings

##################### Building & Installing

GnuCash uses CMake to handle the build process. Details are available in cmake/README_CMAKE.txt

Prior to building GnuCash, you will have to obtain and install the following packages:

cmake: Available https://cmake.org.

ninja: Optional, available at https://ninja-build.org. CMake can generated build rules for Ninja, and generally using Ninja results in faster builds that Makefile based ones.

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 https://sourceforge.net/projects/swig/

Generally, up-to-date build instructions for various Linux distributions can be found on the GnuCash wiki at https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Building

The options that the CMake build system understands are documented in cmake/README_CMAKE.txt and in the Building wiki page mentioned above.

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 CMake option CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX determines where the resulting binary will look for things at runtime. Normally this determines where a "make install" will put all the files. However, cmake also supports the DESTDIR 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 5.x is known to work with the following operating systems:

GNU/Linux -- x86, Sparc, PPC FreeBSD -- x86 OpenBSD -- x86 MacOS -- Intel, Versions 10.9 and later

GnuCash can probably be made to work on any platform for which Gtk+ can and for which there is a C++11 compiler available, given sufficient expertise and effort. If you try and encounter difficulty, please subscribe to the developer's mailing list, [email protected] and we'll try to help you.

######################### Downloads

GnuCash sources and Mac and Windows binaries are hosted at SourceForge and Github. Links for the current version are provided at https://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 https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Development

2. Look over the doxygen-generated documentation at https://code.gnucash.org/docs/MASTER/ or https://code.gnucash.org/docs/MAINT/

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.

5. Build the branch you want from a git clone of our repository and make sure that your build passes all of the tests and runs correctly.

Submitting a Patch:

Please read https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Development#Submitting_Patches.

Thank you.