Build

Run make build to build the application. Executable will be built to build/alphabill.

Build dependencies

• golang version 1.21. (https://go.dev/doc/install)
• C compiler, recent versions of GCC are recommended. In Debian and Ubuntu repositories, GCC is part of the build-essential package. On macOS, GCC can be installed with Homebrew.
• in order to rebuild everything including protobuf definitions (make or make all):
  • protoc version 3.21.9+ (https://grpc.io/docs/protoc-installation)
  • protoc-gen-go (https://grpc.io/docs/languages/go/quickstart/)

Money Partition

1. Run script ./setup-testab.sh -m 3 -t 0 -e 0 to generate configuration for a root chain and 3 money partition nodes. The script generates rootchain and partition node keys, genesis files. Node configuration files are located in testab directory.

2. Run script ./start.sh -r -p money to start rootchain and 3 money partition nodes

3. Run script stop.sh -a to stop the root chain and partition nodes.

   Alternatively, use stop.sh to stop any partition or root and start.sh to resume. See command help for more details.

User Token Partition

Typical set-up would run money and user token partition as fee credits need to be added to the user token partition in order to pay for transactions. Theoretically it is also possible run only the user token partition on its own, but it would not make much sense.

1. Run script ./setup-testab.sh -m 3 -t 3 -e 0 to generate configuration for a root chain and 3 money and token partition nodes. The script generates rootchain and partition node keys, genesis files. Node configuration files are located in testab directory.
2. Run script ./start.sh -r -p money -p tokens to start rootchain and 3 partition nodes (money and token)
3. Run script stop.sh -a to stop the root chain and partition nodes.

Evm Partition

Typical set-up would run money and evm partition as fee credits need to be added to the evm partition in order to create an account and pay for transactions. Theoretically it is also possible run only the evm partition on its own, but it would not make much sense.

1. Run script ./setup-testab.sh -m 3 -t 0 -e 3 to generate configuration for a root chain and 3 money and evm partition nodes. The script generates rootchain and partition node keys, genesis files. Node configuration files are located in testab directory.
2. Run script ./start.sh -r -p money -p evm to start rootchain, partition nodes (evm, money)
3. Run script stop.sh -a to stop the root chain and partition nodes.

Start all partitions at once

1. Run script ./setup-testab.sh to generate genesis for root, and 3 money, tokens and evm nodes.
2. Run start.sh -r -p money -p tokens -p evm to start everything
3. Run stop.sh -a to stop everything

Configuration

It's possible to define the configuration values from (in the order of precedence):

• Command line flags (e.g. --address="/ip4/127.0.0.1/tcp/26652")
• Environment (Prefix 'AB' must be used. E.g. AB_ADDRESS="/ip4/127.0.0.1/tcp/26652")
• Configuration file (properties file) (E.g. address="/ip4/127.0.0.1/tcp/26652")
• Default values

The default location of configuration file is $AB_HOME/config.props

The default $AB_HOME is $HOME/.alphabill

Logging configuration

Logging can be configured through a yaml configuration file. See cli/alphabill/config/logger-config.yaml for example.

Default location of the logger configuration file is $AB_HOME/logger-config.yaml

The location can be changed through --logger-config configuration key. If it's relative URL, then it's relative to $AB_HOME. Some logging related parameters can be set via command line parameters too - run alphabill -h for more.

See logging.md for information about log schema.

Distributed Tracing

To enable tracing environment variable AB_TRACING (or command line flag --tracing) has to be set to one of the supported exporter names: stdout, otlptracehttp, otlptracegrpc or zipkin.

Exporter can be further configured using General SDK Configuration and exporter specific OpenTelemetry Protocol Exporter environment variables. Exceptions are:

• instead of OTEL_TRACES_EXPORTER and OTEL_METRICS_EXPORTER we use AB specific environment variables (ie AB_TRACING) or command line flags to select the exporter;
• alphabill sets propagators (OTEL_PROPAGATORS) to “tracecontext,baggage”;
• OTEL_SERVICE_NAME is set based on "best guess" of current binary's role (ie to "ab.wallet", "ab.tokens", "ab.money",...)

Tracing tests

To enable trace exporter for test the AB_TEST_TRACER environment variable has to be set to desired exporter name, ie

AB_TEST_TRACER=otlptracegrpc go test ./...

The test tracing will pick up the same OTEL environment variables linked above except that some parameters are already "hardcoded":

• "always_on" sampler is used (OTEL_TRACES_SAMPLER);
• the otlptracehttp and otlptracegrpc exporters are created with "insecure client transport" (OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_INSECURE);

Set up autocompletion

To use autocompletion (supported with bash, fish, powershell and zsh), run the following commands after building (this is bash example):

• ./alphabill completion bash > /tmp/completion
• source /tmp/completion

CI setup

See gitlab-ci.yml for details.

GitLab runs the CI job inside docker container defined in alphabill/gitlab-ci-image.