Configure, Build, and Install Gnucash 2.4 on Ubuntu Lucid

I have been anticipating the release of Gnucash 2.4. With this release, the option has been added to use a database as the repository for your financial information. This will allow me to query my financial transactions through a standard database and make nice budgets and reports. Naturally, I cannot wait until Ubuntu releases this new version packaged nicely in a deb. I need it now. This leads me back to the old days of compiling and installing software on Linux. It's slightly less painful today, but definitely not intuitive.

First, from the Gnucash website, grab the new version of the source code tarball and 'tar -xvf' it to a temporary folder. You want the source code so you can compile the program with the database option.

Next, even if you have gnucash installed from your Ubuntu repository (I suggest that you do this first as it likely resolves a lot of dependencies) there are some packages you should install. Try this command:

sudo aptitude install guile-1.8-dev intltool libwebkit-dev \
libdbi0-dev libdbi0 libgconf2-dev guile-gnome2-gconf \
libgnomeui-dev libgoffice-0.8-dev libdbd-{sqlite3,pgsql,mysql}

After installing all of this software, you must correct a small error with slib. Perform the following commands to do this:

cd /usr/share/guile
sudo ln -s /usr/share/slib

Test that this worked with this command (does nothing if successful, returns an error otherwise):

sudo guile -c "(use-modules (ice-9 slib)) (require 'printf)"

The next step is to configure the build. I used this command from the folder where I untarred the source code:

./configure --enable-dbi --with-html-engine=webkit \
--prefix /opt/gnucash 

Next run 'make'. Wait a couple of minutes or so for this to complete and then issue the 'sudo make install' command. This will take another minute or so. Change the link by editing the Ubuntu menu item for gnucash. Point it to the new version's location (/opt/gnucash/bin/gnucash).

Now you can save your financial information in a standard database instead of Gnucash's xml format. I am excited.

Here's another useful resource.