Installing GeniusTrader

At the moment (January 3, 2004) GeniusTrader is still under development and heavy changes appear very often. Therefore it is not reasonable to build a rpm- or deb-package. You have to install the libraries on which GeniusTrader depends and then add the GT-directory to the library-path of perl. Once you downloaded both GT.tar.gz and Scripts.tar.gz from the main page, you can extract them in a new directory :

> mkdir geniustrader
> cd geniustrader
> tar zxf ~/GT.tar.gz
> tar zxf ~/Scripts.tar.gz

Before you continue to install GeniusTrader you have to fulfill the needed dependencies.

Install the dependencies

GeniusTrader uses several external perl modules. You have to install them. You can do this by hand, or you can use the CPAN perl module or you can use the corresponding packages of your linux distribution. Take care, some of those modules depend on other modules.

Carp::Datum (debian package: libcarp-datum-perl)
Date::Calc (debian package: libdate-calc-perl)
Getargs::Long (debian package: libgetargs-long-perl)
XML::LibXML (debian package: libxml-libxml-perl)

If you want to use the CPAN-shell, you can simply use the following commands. Before installing the perl modules you should check if the libxml-library is properly installed.

> perl -MCPAN -eshell
cpan> install Carp::Datum
cpan> install Date::Calc
cpan> install Getargs::Long
cpan> install XML::LibXML

Setup your source of data

In order to do something useful, you have to setup a source of data (prices). Various modules are available for that (check GT::DB::*). Since you may not have any data, GeniusTrader provides some sample data. Extract this archive near the two other archives that you already extracted:

> tar zxf ~/data.tar.gz

Now, you have to create the GT configuration file:

> mkdir ~/.gt
> vim ~/.gt/options or
> xemacs ~/.gt/options :-)

Copy and paste the following text in your configuration file, and edit the directories so that they match your real directories of course:


DB::module Text
DB::text::directory /home/rhertzog/geniustrader/data

Brokers::module SelfTrade

Path::Font::Arial /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TrueType/arial.ttf
Path::Font::Courier /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TrueType/couri.ttf
Path::Font::Times /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TrueType/times.ttf

Analysis::ReferenceTimeFrame year

#Graphic::BackgroundColor black
#Graphic::ForegroundColor white

Aliases::Global::TFS    SY:TFS 50 10|CS:SY:TFS
Aliases::Global::TFS[]  SY:TFS #1 #2|CS:SY:TFS #1|CS:Stop:Fixed #3

Now you are ready to test GeniusTrader. If you want to use the scripts systemwide you should copy them to /usr/local/bin or any other directory in your path. You can now start to use GeniusTrader by following the instructions in the following chapter.