The Bitcoin Development Library

Documentation is available on the wiki.

License Overview

All files in this repository fall under the license specified in COPYING. The project is licensed as AGPL with a lesser clause. It may be used within a proprietary project, but the core library and any changes to it must be published online. Source code for this library must always remain free for everybody to access.

About Libbitcoin

The libbitcoin toolkit is a set of cross platform C++ libraries for building bitcoin applications. The toolkit consists of several libraries, most of which depend on the base libbitcoin-system library. Each library's repository can be cloned and built using common automake 1.14+ instructions. There are no packages yet in distribution however each library includes an installation script (described below) which is regularly verified in the automated build.

The master branch is a staging area for the next major release and should be used only by libbitcoin developers. The current release branch is version3. Detailed installation instructions are provided below.

• Debian/Ubuntu
• MacOS
• Windows

On Linux and macOS libbitcoin is built using Autotools as follows.

$ ./autogen.sh
$ ./configure
$ make
$ sudo make install
$ sudo ldconfig

A minimal libbitcoin build requires boost and libsecp256k1. The libbitcoin/secp256k1 repository is forked from bitcoin-core/secp256k1 in order to control for changes and to incorporate the necessary Visual Studio build. The original repository can be used directly but recent changes to the public interface may cause build breaks. The --enable-module-recovery switch is required.

Libbitcoin requires a C++11 compiler, currently minimum GCC 4.8.0 or Clang based on LLVM 3.5.

Install the build system (Automake minimum 1.14) and git:

$ sudo apt-get install build-essential autoconf automake libtool pkg-config git

Next download the install script and enable execution:

$ wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/libbitcoin/libbitcoin/version3/install.sh
$ chmod +x install.sh

Finally install libbitcoin with recommended build options:

$ ./install.sh --prefix=/home/me/myprefix --build-boost --disable-shared

Libbitcoin is now installed in /home/me/myprefix/.

The macOS installation differs from Linux in the installation of the compiler and packaged dependencies. Libbitcoin supports both Homebrew and MacPorts package managers. Both require Apple's Xcode command line tools. Neither requires Xcode as the tools may be installed independently.

Libbitcoin compiles with Clang on macOS and requires C++11 support. Installation has been verified using Clang based on LLVM 3.5. This version or newer should be installed as part of the Xcode command line tools.

To see your Clang/LLVM version:

$ clang++ --version

You may encounter a prompt to install the Xcode command line developer tools, in which case accept the prompt.

Apple LLVM version 6.0 (clang-600.0.54) (based on LLVM 3.5svn)
Target: x86_64-apple-darwin14.0.0
Thread model: posix

If required update your version of the command line tools as follows:

$ xcode-select --install

First install Homebrew.

Next install the build system (Automake minimum 1.14) and wget:

$ brew install autoconf automake libtool pkgconfig wget

Next download the install script and enable execution:

$ wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/libbitcoin/libbitcoin/version3/install.sh
$ chmod +x install.sh

Finally install libbitcoin with recommended build options:

$ ./install.sh --prefix=/home/me/myprefix --build-boost --disable-shared

Libbitcoin is now installed in /home/me/myprefix/.

First install MacPorts.

Next install the build system (Automake minimum 1.14) and wget:

$ sudo port install autoconf automake libtool pkgconfig wget

Next download the install script and enable execution:

$ wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/libbitcoin/libbitcoin/version3/install.sh
$ chmod +x install.sh

Finally install libbitcoin with recommended build options:

$ ./install.sh --prefix=/home/me/myprefix --build-boost --disable-shared

Libbitcoin is now installed in /home/me/myprefix/.

The install script itself is commented so that the manual build steps for each dependency can be inferred by a developer.

You can run the install script from any directory on your system. By default this will build libbitcoin in a subdirectory named build-libbitcoin and install it to /usr/local/. The install script requires sudo only if you do not have access to the installation location, which you can change using the --prefix option on the installer command line.

The build script clones, builds and installs two unpackaged repositories, namely:

• libbitcoin/secp256k1
• libbitcoin/libbitcoin

The script builds from the head of their version7 and version3 branches respectively. The master branch is a staging area for changes. The version branches are considered release quality.

Any set of ./configure options can be passed via the build script, for example:

$ ./install.sh CFLAGS="-Og -g" --prefix=/home/me/myprefix

Since the addition of BIP-39 and later BIP-38 and Electrum mnemnoic support, libbitcoin conditionally incorporates ICU. To use passphrase normalization for these features libbitcoin must be compiled with the --with-icu option. Currently libbitcoin-explorer is the only other library that accesses this feature, so if you do not intend to use passphrase normalization this dependency can be avoided.

$ ./install.sh --with-icu --build-icu --build-boost --disable-shared

The installer can download and install these dependencies. ICU is a large package that is not typically preinstalled at a sufficient level. Using these builds ensures compiler and configuration compatibility across all of the build components. It is recommended to use a prefix directory when building these components.

$ ./install.sh --prefix=/home/me/myprefix --with-icu --build-icu --build-boost --disable-shared

Visual Studio solutions are maintained for all libbitcoin libraries. NuGet packages exist for all dependencies. ICU is integrated into Windows and therefore not required as an additional dependency when using ICU features.

The libbitcoin execution environment supports Windows XP Service Pack 2 and newer.

Libbitcoin requires a C++11 compiler, which means Visual Studio 2013 (with a pre-release compiler update) or later. Download and install one of the following free tools as necessary:

• Visual Studio 2017 Express
• Visual Studio 2015 Express
• Visual Studio 2013 Express
  • November 2013 CTP Compiler for Visual Studio 2013
  • November 2013 CTP Compiler installation issue

Dependencies apart from the libbitcoin libraries are available as NuGet packages:

• Packages maintained by sergey.shandar
  • boost
  • boost_atomic
  • boost_chrono
  • boost_date_time
  • boost_filesystem
  • boost_iostreams
  • boost_locale
  • boost_log
  • boost_log_setup
  • boost_program_options
  • boost_regex
  • boost_system
  • boost_thread
  • boost_unit_test_framework
• Packages maintained by evoskuil
  • secp256k1
  • libzmq [required for client-server repositories only]

The packages can be viewed using the NuGet package manager from the libbitcoin solution. The package manager will prompt for download of any missing packages.

The libbitcoin solution files are configured with references to these packages. The location of the NuGet repository is controlled by the nuget.config file repositoryPath setting and the NuGetPackageRoot element of each [project].props file.

After cloning the the repository the libbitcoin build can be performed from within Visual Studio or using the build_all.bat script provided in the builds\msvc\build\ subdirectory. The script automatically downloads all required NuGet packages.

Tip: The build_all.bat script builds all valid configurations for all compilers. The build time can be significantly reduced by disabling all but the desired configuration in build_base.bat and build_all.bat.

The libbitcoin dynamic (DLL) build configurations do not compile, as the exports have not yet been fully implemented. These are currently disabled in the build scripts but you will encounter numerous errors if you build then manually.

The secp256k1 and libzmq package above are maintained using the same Visual Studio template as all libbitcoin libraries. If so desired these can be built locally, in the same manner as libbitcoin.

• libbitcoin/secp256k1
• zeromq/libzmq

This change is properly accomplished by disabling the "NuGet Dependencies" in the Visual Studio properties user interface and then importing secp256k1.import.props, which references secp256k1.import.xml and libzmq.import.props, which references libzmq.import.xml.

See boost documentation for building boost libraries for Visual C++.