Installation

Overview

Dexter is a command line application. The shell command to run it has the general form of

$ dex CMND [OPTIONS]

where CMND is the name of an operation (initialize new database, import CSVs, etc) and OPTIONS vary from one command to another.

A typical session with Dexter starts with going to the folder where you work on your finances and running Dexter commands to carry out your expense tracking workflow:

$ cd Finances
$ dex report --audit
$ dex import Downloads/*.csv
$ dex pair
...

Virtual Environment

Dexter depends on a several third-party libraries. We recommend setting up a new virtual environment for Dexter and its dependences.

Start by choosing a Python version. Dexter requires Python 3.13 or higher:

$ pyenv shell 3.13.1

Make a new environment based on the selected Python. You can name it anything; this example makes an environment named dexter:

$ pyenv virtualenv dexter

Run pip to download and install Dexter:

$ pip install git+https://github.com/conery/dexter.git

Help Messages

To test the installation ask dex to print a help message. If you run dex with no arguments you'll see an abbreviated help message:

$ dex
usage: dex [-h] [--dbname X] [--log X] [--preview] [--config F] {config,init,import,...}

Use -h or --help to see a longer message:

$ dex -h
usage: dex [-h] [--dbname X] [--log X] [--preview] [--config F] {config,init,import,...}

options:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --dbname X            database name
  --log X
  --preview
  --config F            TOML file with configuration settings

subcommands:
    config              print default config file
    init                initialize a database
    import              add new records from files
    ...

To print the help message for a subcommand, type the command name before typing -h or --help, e.g.

$ dex init --help
usage: dex init [-h] --file F

options:
  -h, --help  show this help message and exit
  --file F    name of file with account definitions