Developers' Guide

Build and test

Go environment

We assume that you have go installed, GOPATH is set.

Note:You must have your working copy under $GOPATH/src/github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum. You also usually want to checkout the develop branch (instead of master).

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 go-ethereum, let's say from github.com/nirname/go-ethereum. Clone or move your fork into the right place:

git clone [email protected]:nirname/go-ethereum.git $GOPATH/src/github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum

Godep for dependency management

go-ethereum uses Godep to manage dependencies.

Install godep:

go get github.com/tools/godep

Make sure that go binaries are on your executable path:

PATH=$GOPATH/bin:$PATH

godep should be prepended to all go calls build, install and test.

Alternatively, you can prepend the go-ethereum Godeps directory to your current GOPATH:

GOPATH=`godep path`:$GOPATH

Building executables

Switch to the go-ethereum repository root directory (Godep expects a local Godeps folder ).

Each wrapper/executable found in the cmd directory can be built individually.

Building Geth (CLI)

Note: Geth (the ethereum command line client) is the focus of the Frontier release.

To build the CLI:

godep go install -v ./cmd/geth

See the documentation on how to use Geth

Building Mist (GUI)

Note: Mist is not officially released as part of Frontier

For the GUI, you need to install QT5 and set variables.

On OSX with a brew install of qt5:

export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/local/Cellar/qt5/5.4.0/lib/pkgconfig
export CGO_CPPFLAGS=-I/usr/local/Cellar/qt5/5.4.0/include/QtCore/5.4.0/QtCore
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/Cellar/qt5/5.4.0/lib

See the instructions on the wiki

With these prerequisites in place, compile mist with:

godep go build -v ./cmd/mist

Mist does not automatically look in the right location for its GUI assets. For this reason you need to launch it from its build directory

cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum/cmd/mist && mist

or supply an absolute -asset_path option:

mist -asset_path $GOPATH/src/github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum/cmd/mist/assets

Git flow

To make life easier try git flow it sets this all up and streamlines your work flow.

Testing

Testing one library:

godep go test -v -cpu 4 ./eth  

Using options -cpu (number of cores allowed) and -v (logging even if no error) is recommended.

Testing only some methods:

godep go test -v -cpu 4 ./eth -run TestMethod

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

Running benchmarks, eg.:

cd bzz
godep go test -v -cpu 4 -bench . -run BenchmarkJoin

for more see go test flags

Add and update dependencies

To update a dependency version (for example, to include a new upstream fix), run

go get -u <foo/bar>
godep update <foo/...>

To track a new dependency, add it to the project as normal than run

godep save ./...

Changes to the Godeps folder should be manually verified then committed.

To make life easier try git flow it sets this all up and streamlines your work flow.

Contributing

Only github is used to track issues. (Please include the commit and branch when reporting an issue.)

Pull requests should by default commit on the develop branch. The master branch is only used for finished stable major releases.

Code formatting

Sources are formatted according to the Go Formatting Style.