BitcoinCore is a library of support routines for the Bitcoin protocol. It handles elliptic curve signature operations and protocol message encoding/decoding.

I use the Netbeans IDE but any build environment with Maven and the Java compiler available should work. The documentation is generated from the source code using javadoc.

Here are the steps for a manual build. You will need to install Maven 3 and Java SE Development Kit 8 if you don't already have them.

• Create the executable: mvn clean install
• [Optional] Create the documentation: mvn javadoc:javadoc
• [Optional] Copy target/BitcoinCore-v.r.jar and target/bcprov-jdk15on-v.r.jar to wherever you want to store the libraries for use with your Bitcoin applications.

You must call NetParams.configure() before you call any other BitcoinCore routine. This initializes the library data areas for the specified network (production or test).