Emacs ledger-mode with hledger

Thu, 13 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Hledger is a text based accounting tool. It’s very similar to Ledger (hence the name).

Emacs has great ledger-mode but if you use Hledger you’ll definitely get some issues.

TLDR

here is my use-package block where most of the issues are solved

(use-package ledger-mode
  :straight t ;; or :ensure t
  :init
  (add-to-list 'auto-mode-alist '("\\.\\(h?ledger\\|journal\\|j\\)$" . ledger-mode))
  (setq ledger-binary-path "path-to-fix-hledger-script.see-below")
  (setq ledger-mode-should-check-version nil)
  (setq ledger-report-links-in-register nil)
  (setq ledger-report-auto-width nil)
  (setq ledger-report-native-highlighting-arguments '("--color=always"))
  (setq ledger-highlight-xact-under-point nil)
  (setq ledger-default-date-format ledger-iso-date-format))

Add new transactions issue. xact.

There an error appears when you try to add a new transaction that says xact isn’t available. xact is a tool that comes with ledger but it doesn’t exists in hledger package.

The tool is basically trying to match records based on the query passed into it and then return the matched record. Kind of minimal autocompletion.

hledger has --match option instead and to make it work I suggest to refer to this script provided by Anthony Carrico.

Make it executable, put in whatever place you want and update ledger-binary-path variable in your Emacs config.

That should make everything work.

Ruslan's Tech Blog

Emacs ledger-mode with hledger

TLDR

Add new transactions issue. xact.