Install

The current hledger release is 1.33. Here are the release notes.

There are three main ways to install hledger on your computer:

Release binaries are provided by hledger's maintainer and are always up to date.
Packaged binaries are provided by system packagers and are sometimes less up to date.
Or you can build your own binaries, which takes more time and resources.

After installing, here are some final things to check. Your feedback helps make this process smoother.

Release binaries

Official release binaries for Mac, Windows, GNU/Linux (RSS feed):
release binaries

Packaged binaries

Windows

scoop install hledger
choco install hledger -y
winget install simonmichael.hledger

Linux

doas apk add hledger hledger-ui hledger-web

enabling the community repository

pacman -Sy hledger hledger-ui hledger-web

sudo apt install hledger hledger-ui hledger-web

more..

sudo dnf install hledger

more..

sudo layman -a haskell && sudo emerge hledger hledger-ui hledger-web

hledger-linux-arm32v7.zip
hledger-aarch64-manjaro.gz hledger-armhf32-debian.gz (unaudited)

sudo apt install hledger hledger-ui hledger-web

more..

xbps-install -S hledger hledger-ui hledger-web

BSD

pkg install hs-hledger hs-hledger-ui hs-hledger-web
pkg_add hledger
pkg_add hledger

Nix (Linux, Mac)

nix-shell -p hledger hledger-ui hledger-web
Issues: #1030, #1033, #2089, Troubleshooting

Building hledger requires the GHC compiler and either the stack or cabal build tool. These are usually easy to install (see below). But they will require quite a bit of memory and disk space - up to 4G of RAM and 2G of your hard drive to build the hledger tools. See also the build tips below.

On unix systems, you will need a UTF-8-aware locale configured. Also you may need to install additional C libraries to avoid errors like "cannot find -ltinfo" when building hledger. Eg,

on Debian or Ubuntu: sudo apt install libgmp-dev libtinfo-dev zlib1g-dev
on Fedora or RHEL: sudo dnf install gmp-devel ncurses-devel zlib-devel

Build with hledger-install

hledger-install.sh is an automated install script that requires only bash. This is a good choice if you are not used to building Haskell software. It installs build tools if needed, then builds the current release of the hledger tools and some add-on tools, installing them in ~/.local/bin (or ~/.cabal/bin if you had cabal and not stack installed.)

curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/simonmichael/hledger/master/hledger-install/hledger-install.sh
less hledger-install.sh   # <- good practice: inspect downloads before running
bash hledger-install.sh

Build with stack

stack is a reliable Haskell build tool. You can install it with your system package manager or with ghcup or from its website. Then:

stack update
stack install --verbosity error --resolver lts-22 \
    hledger-lib-1.33 hledger-1.33 hledger-ui-1.33 hledger-web-1.33

On MS Windows, run this instead:

stack update
stack install --verbosity error --resolver lts-22 \
    hledger-lib-1.33 hledger-1.33 hledger-ui-1.33 hledger-web-1.33 \
    process-1.6.19.0 Cabal-3.10.1.0 haskeline-0.8.2.1 vty-windows-0.2.0.2

Build with cabal

cabal is another popular Haskell build tool. You can install it with your system package manager or with ghcup. You will also need a a supported version of GHC (8.10 - 9.8). Then:

cabal update
cabal install alex happy
cabal install hledger-1.33 hledger-ui-1.33 hledger-web-1.33

Build in a source checkout

This is the best way to build if you'd like to customise or contribute to hledger. Use git to get the source code for the latest development version:

git clone https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger

or the latest release:

git clone https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger -b 1.33

Then:

cd hledger

and you can build and install with:

stack update
stack install

or:

cabal update
cabal install alex happy
cabal install all:exes

Build in a Docker container

This will use a docker image with the necessary build tools pre-installed:

cd hledger/docker
./build.sh   # or build-dev.sh to keep build artifacts

Build on Android

Here's how to build hledger on Android with Termux, if your phone has plenty of memory.

Build tips

Building the hledger tools and possibly all their dependencies could take anywhere from a minute to an hour.
On machines with less than 4G of RAM, the build may use swap space and take much longer (overnight), or die part-way through. In such low memory situations, try adding -j1 to the stack/cabal install command, and retry a few times, or ask for more tips.
You could build just the hledger CLI to use less time and space, by omitting hledger-ui and hledger-web.
It's ok to kill a build and rerun the command later; you won't lose progress.
You can add --dry-run to stack/cabal/nix install commands to see how much building remains.
If you have previously installed the hledger tools, they will usually be overwritten by the new version. If you have them installed in multiple places in your PATH, you may see a warning, reminding you to remove or rename the old executables.

Here are some known build issues and workarounds on various platforms (possibly obsolete):

Check your installation

After installing, run the hledger tools and verify that their versions are what you just installed (and not older versions from a previous install). Eg:

$ hledger --version
hledger 1.33-...
$ hledger-ui --version
hledger-ui 1.33-...
$ hledger web --version
hledger-web 1.33-...

You can run the built-in unit tests if you'd like:

$ hledger test
...
All 227 tests passed (0.04s)

or the more thorough functional tests, if you are set up for working with the hledger source code:

$ just functest
...
 Total   1047 ...
functest PASSED

PATH

If the hledger tools won't run at the command line or you don't see the expected --version output, check that the newly installed executables are first in your shell's PATH. After building/installing, you may have seen a message about where the executables were installed. Eg:

If you installed with stack, it's $HOME/.local/bin (on Windows, %APPDATA%\local\bin)
If you installed with cabal, it's $HOME/.cabal/bin (on Windows, %APPDATA%\cabal\bin)
If you installed with nix, it could be $HOME/.nix-profile/bin

Make sure that this bin directory is included in your shell's PATH setting, and preferably near the start of the list, to preempt any old hledger binaries you might have lying around. How to configure this depends on your platform and shell. Eg if you are using bash, this will show $PATH:

echo $PATH

and this will add the stack and cabal install dirs to it permanently:

echo "export PATH=~/.local/bin:~/.cabal/bin:$PATH" >> ~/.profile 
source ~/.profile

Here's how to set environment variables on Windows.

LANG

On most unix systems, when you are processing non-ASCII text with hledger, the LANG environment variable must be set to a UTF-8-aware locale, to avoid errors like "invalid byte sequence" or "mkTextEncoding: invalid argument". (This applies to the Haskell build tools like GHC, cabal and stack, as well.) Check that your LANG setting mentions UTF-8, and if not, change it. Eg:

$ echo $LANG
C
$ export LANG=C.UTF-8    # or en_US.UTF-8, fr_FR.utf8, etc.
$ echo $LANG
C.UTF-8

In some cases the locale may need to be installed with your system package manager first. See hledger: Troubleshooting for more help.

On Microsoft Windows, if you see such error messages, perhaps this doc can help.

On Nix or GUIX, the procedures are different.

Next steps

Nicely done! Now see Get started, or come to the #hledger chat where we'll gladly share tips or receive your feedback.

hledger