Release 1.29 · simonmichael/hledger

Release notes (https://hledger.org/release-notes.html#hledger-1-29)

Tag checking,
flexible multi-period start dates,
flexible cost/conversion posting combining,
new commands list,
hledger manual reorg,
easier close command,
10% more Ledger file compatible

hledger 1.29

Breaking changes

Weekly reports are no longer automatically adjusted to start on a
monday; in some cases you might need to adjust their start date to
preserve simple week headings (see below).

Features

In journal format there is now a tag directive for declaring tag names,
and the check command now has a tags check to enforce use of declared tag names.
Periodic transactions and multi-period reports can now start on any date.
To enable this while still maintaining pretty good backward compatibility,
hledger now treats inferred dates, and dates where the day is unspecified,
as "flexible" (which can be automatically adjusted to interval boundaries),
and dates specified to the day as "exact" (which can not).
Eg:
- A periodic rule like ~ monthly from 2023-01-15 now works as
  you'd expect instead of raising an error. This also improves
  our ability to read Ledger files.
- Period options like -p 'monthly from 2023/1/15' or -M -b 2023/1/15
  now start the report on exactly 1/15 instead of being adjusted to 1/1.
Note: periods using in may look partial but are considered to specify exact dates.
So weekly reports such as -p 'weekly in 2023-01', which previously
were adjusted to start on a monday, will now start exactly on 2023-01-01.
This can also cause more verbose column headings.
To guarantee simple week headings, you must now start such reports
exactly on a monday, eg -p 'weekly from 2022-12-26 to 2023-02'.
(#1982)
You can now freely combine @/@@ costs and conversion postings
in a single transaction. This can help readability, and also allows
more flexibility when recording cost. hledger will check that the
two notations are in agreement, and ignore the redundancy if they are.
(Conversion postings are postings to accounts with type V/Conversion
or name equity:conversion/equity:trade/equity:trading,
or subaccounts of these. See also COST.)

Improvements

hledger's commands list has been reorganised for clarity.
More add-on commands are now recognised and categorised,
and unrecognised add-on commands are listed in a more compact
multi-column layout.
(Simon Michael, Michael Grünewald)
hledger's commands list and command line help now use ANSI (bold
headings) when supported.
hledger's commands list and command line help now use a pager
(respecting $PAGER) for long output except on MS Windows.
hledger's --version output no longer shows + for dev builds made
in dirty repos (it was buggy).
The add command's Description completions now also include payee names
(declared with payee or recorded in transactions with |),
not just full descriptions.
aregister now supports HTML output.
(#1996) (Jonathan Dowland)
aregister now shows a " (matching query)" hint in report title
when extra query args (other than date: or depth:) are used,
to reduce confusion.
close now has three modes, --retain/--migrate/--open,
clarifying its uses and providing more useful defaults.
register-match is now the --match mode of the register command.
(This command was used by ledger-autosync at one point; if you still
need it, hopefully register --match works similarly.)
print-unique has been dropped, because it doesn't
support print's options, it disorders same-day transactions, I don't
know of any users or use cases, and it could easily be recreated as
an addon script.
print's JSON output now also includes source positions for --forecast transactions.
(Chris Lemaire)
Journal format now allows the empty commodity symbol to be written
as "", so it's now possible to declare market prices for it:
P 2022-01-01 "" $100. This can be useful for timedot data.
Inferring costs from equity now happens after transaction balancing,
not before. As a result, --infer-costs now works in transactions
where an amount is left blank.
account declarations now reject parenthesised account names,
reducing confusion.
(Chris Lemaire)
Our journal reader now accepts more Ledger syntax, improving Ledger
file compatibility (#1962). We now test our ability to at least
read the sample journals from Ledger's baseline functional tests,
and our success rate has improved from 80% to 90% since 1.28.
- since is accepted as synonym of from in period expressions
- apply year and year are accepted as synonyms of Y
- (lot notes) in amounts and ((valuation expressions)) after amounts are now ignored
- directives
  A, assert, bucket, capture, check, define,
  expr, eval, python, value,
  apply fixed, apply tag,
  end apply fixed, end apply tag, end apply year
  are now ignored
- subdirectives of payee, tag, and commodity (other than format) are now ignored
- pop directive is no longer supported
When reading CSV, we now check that assigned account names are valid (parseable).
(#1978)

Fixes

aregister now handles an extra account query correctly. (#2007)
balance's --help now mentions --layout=tidy
Balance commands with --layout=bare now generate proper table
layout in HTML output.
register's -w/--width option no longer gives ugly parse error messages.
stats's --help no longer wrongly claims to support -O/--output-format.
Balance assignments with a cost now generate a correct balance assertion. (#1965)
The CSV reader now properly skips header lines before attempting to parse records. (#1967)

Scripts/addons

Scripts can now use Hledger.Cli.Script, a convenient new prelude which
helps reduce import boilerplate. It currently re-exports:

Control.Monad
Data.Either
Data.List
Data.Maybe
Data.Ord
Data.Time
Text.Printf hiding (formatString)
Data.Text (Text, pack, unpack)
Safe hiding (at)
System.Directory
System.Environment
System.Exit
System.FilePath
System.Process
Hledger
Hledger.Cli
Hledger.Cli.Main (argsToCliOpts)

(Not much of Data.Text/Data.Text.IO because those need to be qualified.)

Docs

chunk the hledger manual into parts, rename and rearrange sections for better structure/flow
add a cheatsheet demonstrating all the main journal features that I recommend
move a number of my not-so-recommended journal features into a less visible "Other syntax" section
add: payees/descriptions completion
areg: more advice on account-matching
bal: --budget: clarify use of print --forecast
bal: budget: compare with forecasting; add some tips
balance cleanups/reorder
check: adjacentconversionpostings was dropped
cli: balance: fix link to Budgeting page
cli: fix all links to Journal > Tags / Commands > tags
codes: improve example suggested by Rob Nielsen
csv, timeclock, timedot: clarify comment lines (#1953)
csv: add new coinbase example
csv: clarify amount-in/amount-out docs (#1970)
csv: clarify skip/valid csv semantics (#1967)
csv: clarify valid CSV requirements and issues (fix #1966)
csv: cleanup, reorder, CSV rules tips -> Working with CSV
csv: fix wrong if tables doc; rewrite several sections (#1977)
csv: flatten, clean up CSV sections
csv: improve Amount field / Setting amounts
csv: note -in and -out are used together for one posting (#1970)
csv: rules factoring tips
csv: try to clarify how CSV fields and hledger fields work
document --infer-market-prices with signed costs (#1870)
fix duplicate market prices heading breaking info navigation
import: note a pitfall with multifile import
improve Directives summaries
introduction/input/output improvements
journal: cheatsheet: clarify date tag
journal: rewrite Account names, mention brackets/parentheses (#1915)
mention pivoting on a tag with multiple values (#1950)
more cost notation docs; describe Ledger and Beancount cost notation
more mention of posting order effect on inferring cost (#1959)
period expressions doc updates
Removed redundant paragraph in documentation. (J. B. Rainsberger)
rename directive sections, fix many links
reorganise commands list, like the CLI
reorganise bin/README & the Scripts page, add entries for recent scripts
replace "transaction prices" terminology with "costs"
tags: discuss multi-values/overriding (#1950)
update market price inference docs per sol
Updated section on pivoting. Used synonyms for "member" in cases where there could be confusion with the tag named "member." (Robert Nielsen)
use more standard and consistent boilerplate in hledger, ui, web man pages
virtual postings: improve wording per Robert Nielsen

hledger-ui 1.29

In the help dialog, mention that LEFT shows other screens.
In the manual, mention shift-up/down config needed for Terminal.app.

hledger-web 1.29

The add form's typeahead now shows non-ascii text correctly.
(#1961) (Arsen Arsenović)
In the manual, improve --base-url's description. (#1562)

project changes 1.29

Scripts/addons

hledger-script-example.hs: rename/cleanup
sortandmergepostings: new, sorts postings and merges duplicates (Caleb Maclennan, Murukesh Mohanan)
hledger-register-max: new, prints the posting with largest historical balance
hledger-git: record shows better error output, no longer force-adds ignored files
hledger-git: status is fixed, also shows diffs
hledger-git: add short command aliases r, s, l
hledger-git: -h is fixed
hledger-git: pass unrecognised commands to git
hledger-install: also install hledger-edit, hledger-plot
hledger-install: add support for installing python packages
hledger-install: show quieter stack/cabal output
hledger-install: align install status list
hledger-install: don't list hledger-install.sh in PATH
hledger-install: drop hledger-iadd for now hpdeifel/hledger-iadd#71

Docs

move most dev docs to doc/
Scripting hledger: move plugin types table here
Scripts: add hledger-plot, hledger-edit, hledger-fifo (Yann Büchau, Simon Michael)
update lots mockups, move to Mockups page
split Contributor Guide into Contributor Quick Start, LINKS, ISSUES
add REPOS, FILES, DECISIONS
CREDITS: updates, link to github contributors list

Infrastructure

pr template: mention COMMITS page and prefix convention (#1997)
make ghc 9.4 and current stackage nightly the default for dev builds
require megaparsec 9.3+ in dev builds, for its useful dbg tool
make site-watch: fix runaway recursion, be more verbose
new make rules: man-watch
new tools: ciwatch, push, pushdocs, gtree
misc process updates

credits 1.29

Simon Michael, Chris Lemaire, Caleb Maclennan, Jonathan Dowland, J. B. Rainsberger, Michael Grünewald, Robert Nielsen, Yann Büchau.

Installing

At https://hledger.org/install, binary packages should be available for this release within a few days (look for green badges).

Or, you can build from source as described there, after cloning at tag 1.29:
git clone https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger --depth 1 -b 1.29

Or, if under "Assets" below there are release binaries suitable for your OS and hardware, you can use those.

Here are platform-specific instructions for the release binaries.
(You can copy & paste each block of commands as a unit to save time.):

GNU/Linux on 64-bit Intel

At the command line,

cd /usr/local/bin
curl -LOC- https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger/releases/download/1.29/hledger-linux-x64.zip   # can rerun if interrupted
unzip hledger-linux-x64.zip; tar xvf hledger-linux-x64.tar; rm hledger-linux-x64.{zip,tar}        # github workaround, preserves permissions
cd -
hledger --version  # should show the new version
touch $HOME/.hledger.journal   # ensure a default journal file exists

Mac on 64-bit Intel

In a terminal window,

cd /usr/local/bin
curl -LOC- https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger/releases/download/1.29/hledger-mac-x64.zip
unzip hledger-mac-x64.zip && tar xvf hledger-mac-x64.tar && rm hledger-mac-x64.{zip,tar}              # github workaround, preserves permissions
open .
# for the hledger, hledger-ui, hledger-web icons: right-click, Open, confirm it's ok to run
cd -
hledger --version  # should show the new version
touch $HOME/.hledger.journal   # ensure a default journal file exists

Windows on 64-bit Intel

In a powershell window (press Windows-r, type powershell, press enter),

Make a place to keep hledger binaries, and add it to your PATH; this makes running hledger easier. You only need to do this once, not for every release:

mkdir -force $HOME\bin >$null
$ENV:PATH += ";"+$HOME+"\bin"
[Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable("Path", [Environment]::GetEnvironmentVariable("Path", [EnvironmentVariableTarget]::User)+";"+$HOME+"\bin", [EnvironmentVariableTarget]::User)

Download and install the release binaries:

cd $HOME\bin
curl https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger/releases/download/1.29/hledger-windows-x64.zip -OutFile hledger-windows-x64.zip
Expand-Archive hledger-windows-x64.zip -DestinationPath .
rm hledger-windows-x64.zip
cd $HOME
hledger --version           # should show the new version

And ensure a default journal file exists:

out-file -append -encoding ascii $HOME/.hledger.journal

Problems:

Starting hledger/hledger-web by double-clicking their icon won't work; run them from a cmd or powershell window instead.

Windows 7 on 64-bit Intel, using Firefox

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 should show the new version
echo # >> .hledger.journal to ensure a default journal file exists. (Important: the doubled >> is needed to avoid overwriting existing data.)