Download

Here are some ways to install hledger. Binary packages will install quickly, or you can run our install script, or build with stack/cabal. Please do report any trouble. The current hledger release is: 1.15.2 (release notes).

Binary packages

Multiplatform
Nix Linux, Mac	nix-env -f https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/archive/4179ba0.tar.gz -iA hledger hledger-web hledger-ui On Linux, note #1030, #1033
Docker Linux, Mac, Windows more..	docker pull dastapov/hledger
Homebrew Linux, Mac, Windows	brew install hledger
Wine Linux, Mac, FreeBSD	Install Wine and use the Windows binary
Windows
Appveyor builds	hledger.zip (release) hledger.zip (dev)
GNU/Linux
Arch	pacman -S hledger hledger-ui hledger-web
Gentoo	sudo layman -a haskell && sudo emerge hledger hledger-ui hledger-web
Void	xbps-install -S hledger hledger-ui hledger-web
Debian more..	sudo apt install hledger hledger-ui hledger-web
Fedora more..	sudo dnf install hledger
Ubuntu more..	sudo apt install hledger hledger-ui hledger-web
BSD
OpenBSD WIP more..	make -C /usr/ports/openbsd-wip/productivity/hledger install
Cloud
Sandstorm	HLedger Web sandstorm app

Building from source

You can build hledger wherever the Glasgow Haskell Compiler is supported. This can take a while, but it’s normally a reliable process. Use one of the tools below to build the current hledger release. On Windows, hledger-ui is not available and should be omitted from the commands below (except in WSL).

hledger-install.sh

Linux, Mac, WSL

The hledger-install script requires only bash. It's good practice to inspect the script and satisfy yourself that it's safe before running it. It runs stack or cabal for you, installing stack if needed. It installs the main hledger tools plus some addons (hledger-iadd, hledger-interest).

curl -sO https://raw.githubusercontent.com/simonmichael/hledger/master/hledger-install/hledger-install.sh
less hledger-install.sh
bash hledger-install.sh

stack

Linux, Mac, Windows

The latest version of stack (2.1.3 as of 2019-07) will likely work best, so we recommend it. If you have an older version, you can usually upgrade quickly with stack upgrade. Versions older than 1.7.1 will not work. On Windows, the 64-bit version of stack is recommended.

stack update
stack install --resolver=lts-14.3 hledger-lib-1.15.2 hledger-1.15.2 hledger-web-1.15 hledger-ui-1.15 --silent

cabal

Linux, Mac, Windows

cabal v2-update
cabal v2-install hledger-1.15.2 hledger-web-1.15 hledger-ui-1.15

Build tips

• If you haven’t built any Haskell code before, know that building hledger the first time could take 1-2G of disk, 1-2G of free memory, and perhaps up to an hour (though usually much less). Subsequent builds will be much faster.

• It’s fine to kill a build and restart it later, you won’t lose progress.

• With stack or cabal (or nix, etc.) you can add --dry-run to the install command to see how much building is still to do.

• You may be able to save some time/memory/disk space by omitting the hledger-web and hledger-ui packages from the commands above.

• When certain required C libraries, like terminfo, are not installed, the build will fail at the end with a link error such as /bin/ld.gold: error: cannot find -ltinfo. To solve this, use your system’s package manager to install the appropriate system package, and install hledger again. Here are some of those C packages by platform; you can also do a web search for the link error message. Please report any omissions:

  Debian, Ubuntu:	sudo apt install libtinfo-dev
  Fedora, RHEL:	sudo dnf install gmp-devel ncurses-devel

• Here are some known build issues/workarounds on certain platforms:

  windows: hledger-ui is not available
  windows: GHC 8.6.3 hangs while building
  windows: cross-environment non-ascii display issues
  arch: haskell build advice from Arch wiki
  openbsd 6: exec: permission denied
  nix: nix install on linux can fail with “cloning builder process: Operation not permitted”
  nix: on Linux, nix-installed hledger won’t handle non-ascii data
  

Building the development version

The master branch in hledger’s github repo is suitable for daily use, and includes the latest improvements. You’ll need git and stack or cabal. This will build and install all of the main hledger tools using stack:

git clone https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger
cd hledger
stack install

cabal users may find the cabal-install.sh or cabal.project files useful.

Development builds of hledger show a .99 suffix in their --version output, meaning “dev”. So 1.15.99 means “1.16-dev”, the in-development version of 1.16.

Building the development version with Docker

You can also build the development version in a Docker container which will take care of pulling all the necessary tools and dependencies:

git clone https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger
cd hledger/docker
./build.sh

This will build the image tagged hledger with just the latest binaries inside.

If you want to keep all the build artifacts and use the resulting image for hledger development, run ./build-dev.sh instead.

Check your PATH

After building/installing, you may see a message about where the executables were installed. Eg:

• with stack: $HOME/.local/bin (on Windows, %APPDATA%\local\bin)

• with cabal: $HOME/.cabal/bin (on Windows, %APPDATA%\cabal\bin)

• with nix: $HOME/.nix-profile/bin

Make sure that this install directory is included in your shell’s $PATH (preferably near the start, to preempt any old hledger binaries you might have lying around), so that you can run the hledger tools easily. How to configure this depends on your platform and shell. If you are using bash, this will show it:

echo $PATH

and here’s a way to add the stack and cabal install dirs permanently:

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

Test your installation

After a successful installation, you should be able to run the hledger tools (that you installed), and see the expected versions. Eg:

$ hledger --version
hledger 1.15.2
$ hledger-ui --version
hledger-ui 1.15
$ hledger web --version
hledger-web 1.15
$ hledger iadd --version
This is hledger-iadd version 1.3.9

And you could see the unit tests pass (just for fun):

$ hledger test
...
199 tests passed, no failures!

Nicely done. Next, see the Getting Started docs in the sidebar, such as the Basics tutorial, or introduce yourself in the IRC channel/Matrix room.