simonmichael/hledger 1.50 on GitHub

Release notes

Better transaction balancing, include improvements, auto posting account interpolation, csv data commands, import archiving, timeclock improvements, fixes

hledger 1.50

Breaking changes

Transaction balancing is now done in a more robust way, using local precisions only (like Ledger) #2402.
Until now, a transaction was required to balance using its commodities's global display precisions.
Small imbalances were tolerated by configuring display precisions for the whole journal (with commodity directives).
Now, a transaction is required to balance using the precisions in its journal entry only.
This means each entry can use the precision it needs, and balancing precision and display precision are independent.
(So eg, increasing the display precision with -c no longer breaks the journal.)
In practice this requires journal entries to be more accurate, and you will probably need to fix some old entries.
There are three main ways to fix an entry:
- reduce the amounts' precision (use fewer decimal digits, so a lower balancing precision is inferred)
- make the amounts more accurate (use better decimal digits, so the amounts sum to zero more closely)
- or (easiest) add an amountless "expenses:rounding" posting (this is not a cheat, it's a more accurate record of what your bank/broker is doing).
You can also keep the old transaction-balancing behaviour with --txn-balancing=old, for now.
But updating your entries is recommended.
The old behaviour could allow small remainders to accumulate over time,
in accounts that often have an inexact posting amount or cost amount and are never reconciled -
typically equity, revenues, and expenses.
You can check for this in your old journals with a command like
```
hledger bal cur:\\$ -c '$1.000000000000' | grep -E '\...0*[1-9]'
```
(show $ account balances, with many decimals, which have a non-zero decimal in the 3rd place or beyond)
Timeclock format has had various changes:
- Timeclock syntax and parsing is now more robust (when not using --old-timeclock):
  - Semicolon always starts a comment (and timeclock account names may not include semicolons).
  - Trailing spaces are ignored.
  - Clock-ins now require an account name.
  - Clock-outs now can have a comment and tags.
  - Timeclock entries are processed in parse order.
- Some order-related bugs in 1.43 have been fixed.
- Concurrent/overlapping sessions are now fully supported, even if they have the same account name.
- The timeclock doc has been rewritten.
- The --old-timeclock hidden flag has been renamed, documented, and now also affects included files.
  #2141, #2365, #2400, #2417
The import command now shows info messages (such as the dry run "; would import .." message)
on stderr, not stdout.
Also the "no new transactions" output is more compact, showing file names not file paths;
and it no longer prints an extra newline.
Some edge cases in balance report behaviour were changed for internal consistency:
- --declared now treats parent accounts consistently.
- --flat --empty now ensures that implied accounts with no postings are not displayed,
  but accounts with zero balance and actual postings are.
  (Stephen Morgan, #2360, #2395)
hledger now requires at least GHC 9.6 (and base 4.18), to ease maintenance.

Fixes

Paging long output no longer gives an error when LESS is undefined and
less does not have mouse support (as on some FreeBSD systems).
The all: query now requires at least one posting to match.
(Previously, matching no postings at all was also considered a success.)
When using journal format's include directive, several kinds of
error (read failure, cyclic include..) could show an off-by-one line
number or excerpt, confusingly. This has been fixed.
Also, attempting to include a rules file now gives a better error message.
In CSV if rules, match group references like \1 no longer get confused
by differing case.
(Jay Neubrand, #2419)
add, commodities, and diff now support the --conf and -n/--no-conf flags,
like other commands.
#2446
On Windows machines, the add command now properly shows green prompts instead of ANSI codes.
#2410
Balance reports now properly show the historical balance even when the report period is empty.
#2403
Balance reports' csv output, and the balance --budget report, now respect the --summary-only flag.
(Stephen Morgan, #2411, #2443)
The demo command no longer mentions -- ASCIINEMAOPTS in help (that longer works).
Also it shows a better error message when asciinema is not installed.
hledger help -m TOPIC or hledger help -i TOPIC now show the help for TOPIC, as intended.
#2399
Since hledger 1.32.1, the import command, when importing multiple files at once,
would write an empty .latest file for data files with no new transactions
(causing all transactions in those data files to appear new on next import).
This is now fixed.
#2444

Features

CSV rules files can now run a shell command to clean the data:

# read the latest foo*.csv file, and replace "USD" with "$"
source foo*.csv | sed -e 's/USD/$/g'

or to generate the data:

# fetch JSON from simplefin.org, then transform it to CSV
source | simplefinjson | simplefincsv

Whenever hledger runs one of these commands, it will echo the command on stderr.

The import command can now automatically archive imported CSV data files,
saving a dated copy in a data/ directory. This can be useful for troubleshooting,
or for regenerating entries later with improved rules.
To enable it, add archive to the rules file.
This and the previous feature can simplify file management and reduce the need for support scripts.

Improvements

In command line help, flag group headings have been simplified.
And the help for -f/--file, add, and import is now clearer.
When given both an unknown command and an unknown flag, hledger now gives
a clearer error message (about the command, not the flag).
#2388
A long standing awkwardness with addon commands has been solved:
you can now use addon options freely in a hledger command line;
you don't need to write a -- argument first.
#458
In smart dates and period expressions, quarter syntax like 2025q1 or Q2 is now fully supported.
In end-value reports where the end date is unspecified, market prices
in the future can no longer influence the report end date and valuation date.
(Market prices on or before today, still can.)
#2445
A tag: query with the accounts command now only matches account tags, not posting tags.
Eg, hledger accounts tag:t now lists only account a from this journal:
```
account a  ; t:

2025-01-01
    a          1
    b         -1  ; t:
```
Journal format's include directive now has more robust and convenient glob patterns:
- ** can match both directories and filenames
- ** now automatically ignores anything under dotted directories, like .git/, foo/.secret/, etc.
  (If you do want it to search dotted directories,
  you can use the --old-glob flag for now to restore the old behaviour. See also Glob#49.)
- Glob patterns with wildcards now automatically exclude the current file.
  Eg include **.journal will include all other .journal files in this directory and below.
include's error messages and debug messages have been improved.
Eg, the including file paths are also shown.
Journal format's auto posting rules can now use %account to insert the account name
from the matched posting.
(Stephen Morgan, #1975, #2412)
The aregister command no longer abbreviates account names
when producing csv, html, or fods output.
(savanto, #1995, #2416)
The commodities, payees and tags commands now have --used/--declared/--undeclared/--unused flags, like accounts.
And there has been a general cleanup of options and help across these four commands.
The setup command's output has been improved.
Lack of a pager is now reported as info, not warning (there's no default pager on Windows).
Shell completions are ignored for now.

Docs

add: clarify that add is for journal format only
addon commands: edits, drop -- argument from all examples #458
areg: clarification
bin: README updates
COMMANDS: mention general options
completions: README updates
config files: no longer experimental
csv: date-format: mention lack of support for local time formats #1874
csv: source, archive: rewrite, add examples
Depth: fix typo
github release docs: simplify install commands
import: use windows-compatible quotes in watchexec example
include directive: update docs; clarify effect, glob limitations
note fish LEDGER_FILE setup
options: mention that flag+value can't combine with other flags #2059
print: improve --location help
smart dates: fix typo

Examples

CSV rules for Eternl cryptocurrency wallet
VAT example

Scripts/addons

renamed paypaljson2csv to paypaljson
simplefinjson, simplefincsv: new helpers for downloading/converting data from simplefin.org bank aggregator

hledger-ui 1.50

Breaking changes

hledger now requires at least GHC 9.6 (and base 4.18), to ease maintenance.

Improvements

Use hledger 1.50

hledger-web 1.50

Breaking changes

hledger now requires at least GHC 9.6 (and base 4.18), to ease maintenance.

Fixes

The register chart is no longer hidden when the window is narrow.
Dragging on the register chart now selects date ranges more accurately.
Eg, now you can select a range including transactions at the rightmost edge of the chart.

Improvements

Use hledger 1.50

project changes 1.50

Doc updates

FINANCE
ISSUES
REGRESSIONS
RELEASING
SCHEDULE & just schedule script

Website

fix the "edit this page" link
redirects: handle more old pages; fix some old redirects to #FMT-format; stop redirecting /timeclock, /timedot, /timedot.html
set up a github issue template clarifying this repo's scope
shortcut urls: release.hledger.org, nightly.hledger.org, regressions.hledger.org; readyprs.hledger.org excludes PRs with needs-* labels
sidebar: reorganise
sidebar: leave all links visible to avoid popping
sidebar: avoid duplicate links, they're no longer allowed
sidebar: link to the current release's manuals, not the dev version's
Beancount: edits, new conversion tips
Docs: consolidate all user docs onto a single Docs page
Editors: more vs code extensions, more emacs calc notes
Export: updates
FAQ: updates
Hledger By Example: start a new progressive "book", with 18 pages
Tutorial: hledger basics -> to Tutorial: hledger add
Home: new, shorter home page content
Home: show a quote/testimonial, updating on the hour
Investments: fix link (#2436)
Invoicing: fix kairos link
Ledger: edits

Infrastructure/Misc

hledger now requires at least GHC 9.6 (and base 4.18), to ease maintenance.
bump default build, tools to lts 24.8 / ghc 9.10.2
docker: sync Docker GHC version with Stack configuration, update dependencies, and replace deprecated Dockerfile syntax. (Lukas Fleischer)
github workflows improvements
tool updates: checkembeddedfiles, devtag, nightly-push, nightlytag, relver, test
update github issue templates

credits 1.50

Simon Michael (@simonmichael),
Stephen Morgan (@Xitian9),
Jay Neubrand (@jneubrand),
Lukas Fleischer (@lfos),
savanto (@savanto).

Install

For all install options, see hledger.org: Install.
You can install hledger from most package managers (but check for a green badge indicating it's up to date).
Or you can build it from source yourself.

Or you can install up to date binaries from this page, by following the appropriate instructions below.
If you find problems with these instructions, please let us know.

All platforms

If you have eget, that's a convenient way to download the right binaries for your machine:

eget simonmichael/hledger --all

Otherwise:

GNU/Linux, 64-bit Intel

At the command line:

curl -fLOC- https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger/releases/download/1.50/hledger-linux-x64.tar.gz | tar -xzv -f- -C/usr/local/bin hledger hledger-ui hledger-web
hledger --version; hledger-ui --version; hledger-web --version    # should show 1.50

Mac, 64-bit ARM or Intel

In a terminal window (don't download the binaries with your web browser, they won't get authorised):

On ARM macs:

curl -fLOC- https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger/releases/download/1.50/hledger-mac-arm64.tar.gz | tar -xzv -f- -C/usr/local/bin hledger hledger-ui hledger-web
hledger --version; hledger-ui --version; hledger-web --version    # should show 1.50

On Intel macs:

curl -fLOC- https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger/releases/download/1.50/hledger-mac-x64.tar.gz | tar -xzv -f- -C/usr/local/bin hledger hledger-ui hledger-web
hledger --version; hledger-ui --version; hledger-web --version    # should show 1.50

Windows, 64-bit ARM or Intel

In a powershell window (press WINDOWS-R, powershell, ENTER):

cd ~
curl https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger/releases/download/1.43.2/hledger-windows-x64.zip -OutFile hledger-windows-x64.zip
Expand-Archive hledger-windows-x64.zip -Force -DestinationPath AppData\Roaming\local\bin
hledger --version; hledger-ui --version; hledger-web --version    # should show 1.50

Windows 7, 64-bit Intel

These instructions have not been tested recently, please let us know if they work for you:

click hledger-windows-x64.zip below
choose Open with Windows Explorer, OK
click Extract all files
choose a destination folder - ideally one that appears in echo %PATH%, like C:\Windows (though that one will require administrator permission); otherwise, your home directory (C:\Users\YOURNAME)
check "Show extracted files when complete"
click Extract, wait for the destination folder to open
find the hledger, hledger-web icons (if you extracted to \Windows, you'll need to scroll down)
for each icon: double-click, uncheck "Always ask before opening this file", click Run
close those Explorer windows
open a command window (press Windows-r, type CMD, press enter)
hledger --version; hledger-ui --version; hledger-web --version should show 1.50
echo # >> .hledger.journal to ensure a default journal file exists. (Important: the doubled >> is needed to avoid overwriting existing data.)

Problems:

Starting hledger by double-clicking its icon won't work because it needs arguments; run it from the command window instead.
Starting hledger-web by double-clicking its icon may fail eg because Explorer's command window is too small;
configure that to be larger, or run hledger-web from a command window instead.
hledger or hledger-web may fail to run if there is not enough memory available.

Next steps

Once installed, run hledger, and perhaps read hledger.org: Quick start.