Gocoin is a full bitcoin client solution (node + wallet) written in Go language (golang).

The two basic components of the software are:

• client - a bitcoin node that must be connected to Internet
• wallet - a wallet app, that is designed to be used offline

In addition to the client there is an app called downloader that is able to download the block chain at a decent speed. The downloader can be used before you run the client for the first time, but also any time later - e.g. if you had your node inactive for some time and want to quickly sync it up with the network.

Webpage

The official webpage of the project:

• http://www.assets-otc.com/gocoin

On that webpage you can find all the information from this file, plus much much more (e.g. User Manual).

Requirements

Hardware

Online node

At least 4GB of system memory.

64-bit architecture OS and Go compiler.

File system where you store the database must support files larger than 4GB.

Offline wallet

The wallet app has very little requirements and should work on any platform with a working Go compiler.

For security reasons, use an encrypted swap file and if you decide to store a password in the .secret file, do it on an encrypted disc.

Software

Since no binaries are provided, in order to build Gocoin youself, you will need the following tools installed in your system:

• Go - http://golang.org/doc/install
• Git - http://git-scm.com/downloads
• Mercurial - http://mercurial.selenic.com/

If they are all properly installed you should be able to execute go, git and hg from your OS's command prompt without a need to specify their full path.

Note: Git and Mercurial are needed only for the automatic go get command to work. You can replace go get with some manual steps and then you do not need these two tools. Read more at Gocoin's webpage.

Building

Download sources

Two extra packages are needed, that are not included in the default set of Go libraries. You need to download them, before building Gocoin.

go get code.google.com/p/go.crypto/ripemd160
go get code.google.com/p/snappy-go/snappy

You can also use go get to fetch the gocoin sources from GitHub for you:

go get github.com/piotrnar/gocoin

Make sure that the all sources are placed in a proper location within your GOPATH folder, before compiling them (go get should take care of this).

Have gcc if you can

Is is recommended to have gcc complier installed in your system, to get advantage of performance improvements.

For Windows install mingw, or rather mingw64 since the client node needs 64-bit architecture.

Not having gcc

Not having gcc, trying to build the client you will see such an error:

# github.com/piotrnar/gocoin/lib/qdb
exec: "gcc": executable file not found in %PATH%

You can still compile the problematic package...

To fix the problem just copy file lib/qdb/no_gcc/membind.go one folder up (overwriting the original lib/qdb/membind.go).

Compile client

Go to the client/ folder and execute go build there.

Compile wallet

Go to the wallet/ folder and execute go build there.

Compile downloader

Go to the downloader/ folder and execute go build there.

Compile all the tools

Go to the tools/ folder and execute:

go build btcversig.go
go build compressdb.go
go build fetchbal.go
go build fetchtx.go
go build importblocks.go
go build type2determ.go

Pull request

I am sorry to inform you that I will not merge in any pull requests. The reason is that I want to stay the only author of this software and therefore the only holder of the copyrights. If you are missing some functionality that you'd want in, just describe me what you need and I will see what I can do. If you want your specific code in though, please fork and develop your own repo.