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Bitcoin Core integration/staging tree
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=====================================
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[![Build Status](https://travis-ci.org/bitcoin/bitcoin.svg?branch=master)](https://travis-ci.org/bitcoin/bitcoin)
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https://www.bitcoin.org
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Copyright (c) 2009-2014 Bitcoin Core Developers
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What is Bitcoin?
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----------------
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Bitcoin is an experimental new digital currency that enables instant payments to
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anyone, anywhere in the world. Bitcoin uses peer-to-peer technology to operate
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with no central authority: managing transactions and issuing money are carried
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out collectively by the network. Bitcoin Core is the name of open source
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software which enables the use of this currency.
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For more information, as well as an immediately useable, binary version of
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the Bitcoin Core software, see https://www.bitcoin.org/en/download.
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License
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-------
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Bitcoin Core is released under the terms of the MIT license. See [COPYING](COPYING) for more
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information or see http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT.
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Development process
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-------------------
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Developers work in their own trees, then submit pull requests when they think
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their feature or bug fix is ready.
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If it is a simple/trivial/non-controversial change, then one of the Bitcoin
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development team members simply pulls it.
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If it is a *more complicated or potentially controversial* change, then the patch
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submitter will be asked to start a discussion (if they haven't already) on the
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[mailing list](http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?forum_name=bitcoin-development).
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The patch will be accepted if there is broad consensus that it is a good thing.
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Developers should expect to rework and resubmit patches if the code doesn't
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match the project's coding conventions (see [doc/coding.md](doc/coding.md)) or are
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controversial.
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The `master` branch is regularly built and tested, but is not guaranteed to be
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completely stable. [Tags](https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/tags) are created
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regularly to indicate new official, stable release versions of Bitcoin.
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Testing
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-------
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Testing and code review is the bottleneck for development; we get more pull
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requests than we can review and test on short notice. Please be patient and help out by testing
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other people's pull requests, and remember this is a security-critical project where any mistake might cost people
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lots of money.
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### Automated Testing
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Developers are strongly encouraged to write unit tests for new code, and to
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submit new unit tests for old code. Unit tests can be compiled and run (assuming they weren't disabled in configure) with: `make check`
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Every pull request is built for both Windows and Linux on a dedicated server,
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and unit and sanity tests are automatically run. The binaries produced may be
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used for manual QA testing — a link to them will appear in a comment on the
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pull request posted by [BitcoinPullTester](https://github.com/BitcoinPullTester). See https://github.com/TheBlueMatt/test-scripts
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for the build/test scripts.
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### Manual Quality Assurance (QA) Testing
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Large changes should have a test plan, and should be tested by somebody other
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than the developer who wrote the code.
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See https://github.com/bitcoin/QA/ for how to create a test plan.
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Translations
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------------
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Changes to translations as well as new translations can be submitted to
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[Bitcoin Core's Transifex page](https://www.transifex.com/projects/p/bitcoin/).
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Translations are periodically pulled from Transifex and merged into the git repository. See the
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[translation process](doc/translation_process.md) for details on how this works.
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**Important**: We do not accept translation changes as GitHub pull requests because the next
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pull from Transifex would automatically overwrite them again.
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Translators should also subscribe to the [mailing list](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/bitcoin-translators).
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Development tips and tricks
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---------------------------
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**compiling for debugging**
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Run configure with the --enable-debug option, then make. Or run configure with
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CXXFLAGS="-g -ggdb -O0" or whatever debug flags you need.
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**debug.log**
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If the code is behaving strangely, take a look in the debug.log file in the data directory;
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error and debugging messages are written there.
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The -debug=... command-line option controls debugging; running with just -debug will turn
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on all categories (and give you a very large debug.log file).
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The Qt code routes qDebug() output to debug.log under category "qt": run with -debug=qt
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to see it.
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**testnet and regtest modes**
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Run with the -testnet option to run with "play bitcoins" on the test network, if you
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are testing multi-machine code that needs to operate across the internet.
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If you are testing something that can run on one machine, run with the -regtest option.
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In regression test mode, blocks can be created on-demand; see qa/rpc-tests/ for tests
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that run in -regest mode.
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**DEBUG_LOCKORDER**
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Bitcoin Core is a multithreaded application, and deadlocks or other multithreading bugs
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can be very difficult to track down. Compiling with -DDEBUG_LOCKORDER (configure
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CXXFLAGS="-DDEBUG_LOCKORDER -g") inserts run-time checks to keep track of which locks
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are held, and adds warnings to the debug.log file if inconsistencies are detected.
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