GnuCash Sources

GnuCash Sources

Stable Releases

Note: The latest released version is 5.6.

The latest stable release of the GnuCash source code as zipped tar archives are available for download from:

• Gnucash Website Linux source link;
• Gnucash website Download page, bzip2 compressed tarball link;
• SourceForge GnuCash page.

These links all point to the SourceForge Download page and will download a zipped (compressed) tarball containing the sources for gnucash with a name of the form ,em>gnucash-<major>.<minor>-<packing>.tar.<bz2> </em>, e.g. gnucash-5.6-1.tar.bz2.

All available stable releases are available from | SourceForge by selecting gnucash(stable) from the Files tab then selecting the version you require. The page has downloads for Windows, Mac-OSX, and bzip2 and gz zipped sources. For Linux select the source code gnucash-<version>-1.tar.bz2 or gnucash-<version>-1.tar.gz file depending upon which zip your distribution uses. You will find appropriate sha256sum values listed at the bottom of each <version> page which you can use to check the download integrity as described below.

You should save this file to a suitable location, e.g. Downloads directory in your home directory (/home/<user>/Downloads or $HOME/Downloads if the environment variable HOME is defined. Here <user> is your username on your system).

You should then extract the source code from the zipped archive to a suitable directory under your home directory where you will build gnucash, e.g. something like /home/<user>/Applications. The extracted top level source file usually has the same name as the archive.

In a shell, enter the following commands to download and check the tarball:

export VERSION=3.1                                                                        # One place to adjust the version;
export TARBALL=gnucash-$VERSION-1.tar.bz2                                                 # if you still have no bzip2 use ".gz" instead of ".bz2";
export URL=https://sourceforge.net/projects/gnucash/files/gnucash%20%28stable%29/$VERSION # ;
cd ~/Downloads                                                                            # "~" short for "$HOME" = "/home/<user>";
wget $URL/$TARBALL                                                                        # Download the tarball;
sha256sum $TARBALL                                                                        # Integrity check: Compare the output with the sha256sum from the URL;
tar -xjvf $TARBALL -C ~/Applications                                                      # extract the tarball below your personal Applications directory;

.

Unstable Releases

Unstable releases rae also available from the | SourceForge page by selecting gnucash(unstable) option from the Files tab and then selecting the release you require from that page. Substitue unstable for stable in the export defining URL to use the above commands to download unstable releases.

Developers Source Code

The current developer's source code is available from the GitHub repository. See the instructions for using usingGit with GnuCash on GitHub:

• information on the branches available from the repository and their uses;
• how to develop code for new features and bugfixes; and
• how to submit patches to the source code in the repository.

Do not attempt to use tarballs from GitHub.

To clone the repository, in a shell enter

cd ~/Applications                                   # or other suitable directory under your home directory where  you build applications
export BRANCH=maint                                 # Define the branch to download. maint for bugfixes to stable branch. master for new features
export VERSION=3.1                                  # Specify the version of the current maint branch being downloaded (for naming the downloaded directory only)
export URL=https://github.com/Gnucash/gnucash.git   # Specify the URL for the GitHub repository
git clone -b $BRANCH $URL gnucash-$VERSION          # clone the specified branch from the repository into the directory ~/Applications/gnucash-$VERSION e.g. gnucash-3.1

The VERSION variable has been used only to name the directory in a manner consistent with the downloaded tarballs and the build instructions .

For a list of the build dependencies for your distribution consult:

• the Dependencies wiki page;
• README.dependencies; or
• the README.dependencies file in your cloned directory.

For notes on compiling/building GnuCash consult:

• the Building wiki page;
• README.git file; or
• the README file in your downloaded directory.

For notes on working on the source code:

• HACKING; or
• the HACKING file in your downloaded directory.