Developers' Guide

This document is the entry point for developers of the Go implementation of Bytom.

Installation Instructions

If you just want to run bytom, use the normal Installation Instructions

Building and Testing

Go Environment

We assume that you have go v1.8 or higher installed, and GOPATH is set.

Note:You must have your working copy under $GOPATH/src/github.com/bytom.

Since go does not use relative path for import, working in any other directory will have no effect, since the import paths will be appended to $GOPATH/src, and if the lib does not exist, the version at master HEAD will be downloaded.

Most likely you will be working from your fork of bytom, let's say from github.com/nirname/bytom. Clone or move your fork into the right place:

git clone git@github.com:nirname/bytom.git $GOPATH/src/github.com/bytom

Building Executables

Switch to the bytom repository root directory.

$ cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/bytom
$ make bytomd    # build bytomd
$ make bytomcli  # build bytomcli

When successfully building the project, the bytom and bytomcli binary should be present in cmd/bytomd and cmd/bytomcli directory, respectively.

Initialize

First of all, initialize the node:

$ cd ./cmd/bytomd
$ ./bytomd init --chain_id testnet

There are two options for the flag --chain_id:

testnet: connect to the testnet.
mainnet: standalone mode.

After that, you'll see .bytomd generated in current directory, then launch the node.

launch

$ ./bytomd node --mining

available flags for bytomd node:

      --auth.disable                Disable rpc access authenticate
      --mining                      Enable mining
      --p2p.dial_timeout int        Set dial timeout (default 3)
      --p2p.handshake_timeout int   Set handshake timeout (default 30)
      --p2p.laddr string            Node listen address.
      --p2p.max_num_peers int       Set max num peers (default 50)
      --p2p.pex                     Enable Peer-Exchange
      --p2p.seeds string            Comma delimited host:port seed nodes
      --p2p.skip_upnp               Skip UPNP configuration
      --prof_laddr string           Use http to profile bytomd programs
      --wallet.disable              Disable wallet
      --web.closed                  Lanch web browser or not

Given the bytomd node is running, the general workflow is as follows:

create key, then you can create account and asset.
send transaction, i.e., build, sign and submit transaction.
query all kinds of information, let's say, avaliable key, account, key, balances, transactions, etc.

Testing

Testing one library:

go test -v ./account

Using options -v (logging even if no error) is recommended.

Testing only some methods:

go test -v ./account -run TestCreateAccount

Note: here all tests with prefix TestMethod will be run, so if you got TestMethod, TestMethod1, then both!

Running benchmarks, eg.: switch to test directory.

cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/bytom/test
go test -v -bench=. -benchtime=3s -run=none

Using options -bench to specify test directory, and -benchtime to specify the test time.

for more see go test flags

Contributing

Thank you for considering to help out with the source code! We welcome contributions from anyone on the internet, and are grateful for even the smallest of fixes!

GitHub is used to track issues and contribute code, suggestions, feature requests or documentation.

If you'd like to contribute to bytom, please fork, fix, commit and send a pull request (PR) for the maintainers to review and merge into the main code base.

PRs need to be based on and opened against the master branch (unless by explicit agreement, you contribute to a complex feature branch).

We encourage a PR early approach, meaning you create the PR the earliest even without the fix/feature. This will let core devs and other volunteers know you picked up an issue. These early PRs should indicate 'in progress' status.

[ English | 中文 ]

by bytom