11.2. Installing Finance::Quote

To determine if the Perl module Finance::Quote is already installed on your system, type perldoc Finance::Quote in a terminal window and check to see if there is any documentation

$ perldoc Finance::Quote
NAME
    Finance::Quote - Get stock and mutual fund quotes from various exchanges

SYNOPSIS
       [...]

available. If you are now shown documentation, then Finance::Quote is already installed and you can configure periodical quotes update as described in Section 11.4, “Configuring for Getting Quotes Periodically”. If no documentation is displayed, you will have to continue with this chapter.

The process of installing Finance::Quote depends on the system. For the different supported systems, you can follow the instructions below:

Procedure 11.4. On Linux

  1. Close GnuCash.

  2. Run the gnc-fq-check command to verify that the program is already in a directory that is entered in the PATH environment variable. [9]

  3. Next, update with sudo gnc-fq-update or su -c gnc-fq-update with root privileges Finance::Quote. It depends on your distribution. For more information, see the next chapter at Section 11.3.2, “gnc-fq-update”.

  4. Run gnc-fq-dump to check Finance::Quote works properly. This program returns the version number of Finance::Quote module currently installed as well as a list of sources available via the Finance::Quote module. It will also inform you if there is a problem with your installation or if it is missing, and may suggest a fix.

Procedure 11.5. On macOS

  1. Close GnuCash.

  2. Install Xcode [10] if it is not installed. It contains devel tools, which are required by CPAN to build and test the needed Finance::Quote modules.

  3. Run the Update Finance Quote app in the GnuCash dmg.

    You can run it from the dmg or copy it to the same folder to which you copied GnuCash. It will open a Terminal window and run a script for you which will ask lots of questions. Accept the default for each unless you know what you’re doing.

Procedure 11.6. On Windows

  1. Close GnuCash.

  2. Run StartGnuCashInstall Online Price Retrieval for GnuCash. This is a small utility that installs Finance::Quote for you.



[9] If you’ve installed GnuCash packages provided by your distribution, gnc-fq-check must be on your PATH. The currentness of your distribution can be checked under Finance::Quote- versions.

[10] You can install Xcode from the App Store or install the much smaller Xcode command line tools by running sudo xcode-select --install from a Terminal.app prompt.