Simon Michael

G'day all. I'm pleased to announce hledger 2.0 preview release 2, with many refinements to lot tracking, based on user testing.

(And also hledger 1.52.1, which adds hledger 2-compatible G and U account types to hledger 1.)

- https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger/releases/tag/1.99.2
- https://hledger.org/relnotes.html#2026-04-28-hledger-1992
- https://hledger.org/install

Release contributors: Simon Michael, Joshua Chapman.

#hledger #plaintextaccounting

G'day all. A poll:

Should hledger 2 always infer market prices from @/@@ transacted prices, like Ledger ? (and drop the --infer-market-prices flag)

- Yes, having this always on would be harmless and more useful
- No, having it always on, or changing it, would be harmful
- Other, see my reply

Or vote in the matrix poll: https://matrix.to/#/!6BCfAOV-btRKuqChph9Z_ppkIj8KttMoIL_rB4eU0Os/$JveSoLuLOWS_Mg10JDUJKnu33RAclZML03JQ4Lp46qY?via=asgard.chat&via=matrix.org&via=tchncs.de

#hledger #plaintextaccounting

Glad it has helped you! A few things that might help:
- other rust projects linked at plaintextaccounting.org
- https://hledger.org/SPEC-journal.html
- https://hledger.org/hledger.html#amounts (manual is a kind of spec)
- amountp and friends in Hledger.Read.Common

#hledger #plaintextaccounting #haskell

@happyborg Sure, here's a few examples of people leveraging #hledger in their AI use:

https://forum.plaintextaccounting.org/tag/ai/12

https://x.com/CookResearcher/status/2032247670903828596

https://x.com/sudo_goreng/status/2036789525616414970

https://x.com/motdotla/status/2029247616828276838

https://x.com/gerold_ha/status/2037917692225532083

https://x.com/kenrickbeckett/status/2020538339292545458

Thanks all, for your comments re my explorations of #AI use in developing #hledger. I probably won't be able to respond in every case, but all civil inputs will be read and considered and are much appreciated.

And, hledger 2.0 preview 1 (AKA 1.99.1), which adds

automated lot tracking and capital gains calculation,
improvements to `print`'s beancount output,
and a new policy for AI-assisted development.

This is the first hledger release to explore AI-assisted development, so please do check out the evolving AI policy/FAQ: https://hledger.org/AI.html

- https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger/releases/1.99.1
- https://hledger.org/relnotes.html#2026-03-28-hledger-1991

#plaintextaccounting #haskell

I'm pleased to announce a #hledger double release! First, hledger 1.52, with

more robust paging,
faster valuation,
commodity tags,
and cost basis annotations which are preserved and can be exported (examples provided).

- https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger/releases/1.52
- https://hledger.org/relnotes.html#2026-03-20-hledger-152
- https://hledger.org/install

#plaintextaccounting #haskell

This aside, I understand the wish to have your accounting be on a rock solid foundation - I feel the same. No software is perfect, but you can still achieve it: keep your data, and if you need extra assurance, your reports, in version control; use double entry bookkeeping; regularly reconcile with real world balances; and perhaps run extra correctness checks. (#plaintextaccounting FTW.)
It is now very hard to miss any mistake made by your software - you'll see and address it right away.

+1 for https://github.com/rustledger/rustledger; there's also

https://github.com/themoritz/turbobean

https://github.com/zhang-accounting/zhang

https://github.com/tackler-ng/tackler

https://github.com/tesujimath/limabean

(#plaintextaccounting in #rustlang)

Me! 👋

Don't Skip The Docs.
For emacs tips, start at https://hledger.org/editors.html#emacs.

Don't assume you need hledger-mode (ledger-mode also works well, I use it).

With flycheck-hledger (or a VCS precommit hook), don't feel you need maximal error checking - do what's most useful now, you can always do stricter checks manually.

Don't try for perfect accounts/files/workflow up front - expect evolution.

Don't limit yourself with an ancient hledger version - get the latest.

#hledger #plaintextaccounting

Here's how it went for me:

- amazon prime video: paused (takes effect 2/17)
- prime video ad free: cancelled
- audible: cancelled, provided reason (couldn't pause; annual membership lasts till december, I'll be able to reactivate)
- netflix: paused (takes effect 2/25)
- youtube premium: paused (takes effect 2/4)
- whatsapp: family notified, deleted from phone and laptop
- facebook: deleted from phone, avoid on web
- apple: avoid purchases

#resistandunsubscribe #resistICE @profgalloway

G'day all. https://www.resistandunsubscribe.com is a month-long economic strike, beginning 2026-02-01, which aims to change US government policy and defend democracy, civic society and the rule of law in the US. You can read more about the rationale here: https://www.profgalloway.com/resist-and-unsubscribe. HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46844969

#resistandunsubscribe #resistICE @profgalloway

hledger-1.51.2 fixes some regressions and brings some minor improvements.

- https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger/releases/1.51.2
- https://hledger.org/relnotes.html#2026-01-08-hledger-1512
- https://hledger.org/install

#hledger is free, robust, friendly, multicurrency, double-entry, #plaintextaccounting software for unix, mac, windows, and the web.

This was a lot of work, so I'm putting it out there in case someone else finds it useful:

new docs describing #OpenCollective's #csv, and #hledger rules for converting it.

https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger/tree/master/examples/csv/other/opencollective

#plaintextaccounting

Found in awk-pta's README, this great interview with Prof. Alfred Aho about the origins of AWK: https://a-z.readthedocs.io/en/latest/awk.html

"it was born from the necessity to meet a need. As a researcher at Bell Labs in the early 1970s, I found myself keeping track of budgets..."

"Some Wall Street financial houses used AWK when it first came out to balance their books because it was so easy to write data-processing programs in AWK..."

Plot twist ! Is AWK the original #plaintextaccounting tool ??

#awk #gawk

https://joyful.com/Lot+tracking+in+PTA

Tracking investment lots is often necessary to calculate capital gains accurately and to comply with tax law. It's a tricky, increasingly widespread bookkeeping need. This page aims to be a useful guide to the topic, for PTA users and PTA developers.

#plaintextaccounting
#hledger
#ledgercli
#beancount
#bookkeeping

I like being able to use flexible, rock solid, industrial strength tools from the huge programmer ecosystem to maintain and analyse my financial records. For one example: #hledger + #emacs + #git/#jj (complemented by ledger-mode, flycheck-hledger, #just, #pandoc, #fava..)

I like knowing that my data and reports are safe, portable, owned by me, utterly trustworthy, and get strictly better over time.
And if needed could be read or reconstructed by humans from a printout.

2/

#plaintextaccounting

#ThisWeekInHledger 2024-08-09

Offline for a while, not much to show in last three weeks.
Improved bad regexp error message; bin/ updates;
timeclock, cookbook, mobile doc updates.
Writing a new course or book on time tracking.

Quotes

it is very satisfying to get a report of my last 10 years swiftly over the weekend. Thanks for the software :) -- droidoneone

#hledger #plaintextaccounting

#ThisWeekInHledger:

- bs,cf,is: show interval in report title
- check recentassertions: improve message
- cli fixes
- new example config file
- ui menu screen: consistent control/display of narrowed period
- web: guess a more robust base url without --base-url
- web: require http[s]:// in --base-url
- docs: Date adjustments, FAQ: How to tidy a journal
- daily support
- Michael Rees posted PR #2211 for flexible register sorting

more…
https://hledger.org/news.html#this-week-in-hledger-2024-07-19

#hledger #plaintextaccounting

#ThisWeekInHledger updates are getting more terse each week, as it's often just me right now, and I've been trying to reduce the boilerplate. I send them out to #hledger matrix chat, mail list, news page, and mastodon. And PTA forum..

Except on mastodon, TWIH usually includes a couple of user quotes. I'd like to share some of the great quotes/testimonials I've seen, but sometimes it can feel a bit spammy and self-promoting. Maybe I'll try to rotate them on the website or something, instead.

@n0toose
Don't forget https://hub.darcs.net , hosting darcs repos since 2012.
(3767 of them right now, from 1977 user accounts)

#darcs #haskell #versioncontrol

#ThisWeekInHledger:

Command line parsing testing & fixes; hledger-ui menu screen keys; example shell scripts updates; doc updates (add, config files, hledger-ui).

Quotes: It's hugely valuable to have all of your financial data in one, human-readable place. Not only to you, but to whomever might be executing your will :wink:

more… https://hledger.org/news.html#this-week-in-hledger-2024-07-12

#hledger #plaintextaccounting

#ThisWeekInHledger
Ongoing testing/refinement of CLI, config file support; Tiller csv rules example; explain shebang commands better in hledger-script-example... https://hledger.org/news.html#this-week-in-hledger-2024-07-05

#hledger #plaintextaccounting

#ThisWeekInHledger: Worked on CLI and config file support.
More… https://hledger.org/news.html#this-week-in-hledger-2024-06-28

#hledger #plaintextaccounting

#ThisWeekInHledger
Updated the hledger-register-max script, fixed a problem with just ghci* scripts, refactored the main procedure and command line processing, worked on config file support.
…more: https://hledger.org/news.html#this-week-in-hledger-2024-06-21

#hledger #plaintextaccounting

#ThisWeekInHledger
I fixed an old bug with account type declarations in multiple files, and an incompatibility of --tldr with tealdeer. I automated the updating of option docs in manuals, and worked on
- code cleanups, removing tech debt
- more borders in tabular reports with --pretty
- better command line processing
- a config file system

Misc: The docker image for hledger 1.34 is out.
And more... https://hledger.org/news.html#this-week-in-hledger-2024-06-14

#hledger #plaintextaccounting

#ThisWeekInHledger
Released hledger 1.34, fixed some CI issues. Improved docs:
- cli, ui, web: synopsis, options cleanup/consistency
- command flags are now included in manuals (and Shake cmddocs updates them)
- environment: correction, NO_COLOR does not override --color=yes
- Generating data: rewrite
- ghrelnotes: fix mac, linux install commands
- secondary dates: officially deprecate secondary dates and --date2
- …more: https://hledger.org/news.html#this-week-in-hledger-2024-06-07

#hledger #plaintextaccounting

#ThisWeekInHledger:
sm:
- integrate tldr pages as --tldr
- make help -m, --man jump to TOPIC properly
- --color now also accepts y or n, like --pretty
- CLI commands list and options cleanups
- make checkembeddedfiles more robust
- tools: just twih date fixes
- release prep
- more.. https://hledger.org/news.html#this-week-in-hledger-2024-05-31

#hledger #plaintextaccounting

#ThisWeekInHledger
Actually this fortnight, since I missed a post.
Last week I finished getting hledger back into stackage nightly,
fixed build errors with GHC 8.10,
and updated github workflows.
This week I worked on release automation,
flattened and simplified page tables-of-contents on hledger.org,
updated/added more hledger docs in the tldr project,
and fixed breakage in the hledger-install.sh script on non-windows platforms.
More... https://hledger.org/news.html#this-week-in-hledger-2024-05-24

#plaintextaccounting #hledger

#ThisWeekInHledger

- `-I` can now be overridden by `-s` or `check`
- commands list updated
- doc updates: commands list, report start & end date, smart dates, balance command
- site updates: install, FAQ reorg
- Docker image for 1.33.1 is available
- more: https://hledger.org/news.html#this-week-in-hledger-2024-05-10

#hledger #plaintextaccounting

#ThisWeekInHledger 2024-05-03

- Released hledger 1.33.1
- parse include directives with trailing whitespace
- support ghc-debug for analysing memory/profile info
- commands list reorg
- check ordereddates before balance assertions
- provide a basic openapi specification of hledger-web’s HTTP-JSON API
- doc updates: github release windows install instructions, check command, Contributor Quick Start, Developer FAQ, misc site tweaks
…more https://hledger.org/news.html#this-week-in-hledger-2024-05-03

#plaintextaccounting #hledger

Unreasonably pleased by a tiny tweak to #plaintextaccounting scripts. I keep most of them in a #Justfile. I have these useful help/h recipes:

# list recipes, optionally filtered by REGEX.
@help *REGEX:
if [[ '{{ REGEX }}' == '' ]]; then just -lu; else just -lu --color=always | rg --pcre2 -i '{{ REGEX }}'; true; fi

alias h := help

and shell alias j=just; so to list foo-related scripts I’m often typing

j h foo

It's short, but… I added alias h='just help’, now it’s much better:

h foo

🎉

#ThisWeekInHledger 2024-04-26

- run checks in a well-defined order, and tweak that order
- check ordereddates: drop --date2 support; check primary dates only
- balcmds: show digit groups marks in html output again [#2196]
- retire the main Makefile
- relnotes.hs: generate/update release notes from changelogs
- md-issue-refs.el: manage issue links in markdown
- examples: vanguard, fidelity csv rules updates
- doc updates
- more… https://hledger.org/news.html#this-week-in-hledger-2024-04-26

#plaintextaccounting #hledger

#ThisWeekInHledger 2024-02-16:
Not much time for hledger :hledger: hacking this week;
support and doc tweaks, and an updated example CSV rules file for #Daedalus (#Cardano wallet software).
Read more… https://hledger.org/news.html#this-week-in-hledger-2024-02-16

#hledger #plaintextaccounting

And the next part: importing transactions you may have forgotten but your forecast rules have not. Nicely avoids importing transactions twice.

YEAR := `date +%Y`
FORECASTJ := YEAR / YEAR + '-forecast.journal'

# import any recent transactions generated by forecast rules; --dry to preview
@import-forecast *ARGS:
hledger import -s -I --auto --forecast=-15days..tomorrow {{ FORECASTJ }} "$@"

(import explained: https://hledger.org/dev/hledger.html#import)

#hledger #PlainTextAccounting #justfile

(In future, if osh/ysh get some make/just-inspired features or libraries (seems quite possible), the pendulum may swing back to using shell only.

#oilshell #justfile #makefile

I'm using `just` eg to manage developer/maintainer task scripts for #hledger, and to manage personal finance/time/task scripts.

Here's one for showing a near-term transactions forecast:

# show forecast transactions predicted recently and soon
@forecast *ARGS:
hledger print -I --auto --forecast=-15days..+15days tag:generated "$@"

(Forecasting explained: https://hledger.org/dev/hledger.html#forecasting)

#PlainTextAccounting #justfile

You can achieve some of these things with make, if you work hard enough, and ensure you have the right version, but it's more complicated, more fragile, less portable, and harder for others to understand.

#justfile

Why I’m using `just` for script management after many years with make/shell:

- you can easily list recipes with their docs
- recipes have robust argument handling
- easier and smoother integration with scripting languages
- much fewer idiosyncracies
- more portable (one version, more likely to work on Windows)
- makes things more robust
- frees up vital head space.

You have to install it; and you lose the ability to depend on other outputs, for now.

#justfile

In which I share comparable make/bash scripts and a justfile, including some nifty scripts; and touch on why I've adopted just after many years with make and bash:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38811688

#justfile
#makefile
#programming
#hledger

@madcoder Yup. Some good tags to follow here: #darcs #darcshub #smederee

https://updown.io/bc6u is a status page for https://hub.darcs.net . I've increased the frequency from 5m to (temporarily) 15s to see if the (hourly ?) cron restarts are detectable.

Incidentally, I'm a happy https://updown.io customer, it's awesome.

#darcs #DarcsHub

Lots of #darcs toots I see ! 👍

After receiving some patches, I worked a little on https://hub.darcs.net tonight. It has been running basically maintenance free (touch wood) for years, a goal of mine. It turns out I last compiled it with GHC 8.0 in 2018.

The dev instance https://hub-dev.darcs.net is now up, running latest code (30 new patches) and compiled with GHC 8.10.7. It uses the same repos and db as prod, so you should be able to use it for real work. Testing welcome!

#darcs #DarcsHub