The Blockstack Browser allows you to explore the Blockstack internet.
- Releases
- Developing
- Building for macOS
- Building for the Web
- Contributing
- Logging
- Tech Stack
- Maintainer
- Testing
Please note these instructions have only been tested on macOS 10.13
- Download and install the latest release of Blockstack for Mac.
- Start Blockstack
- Option-click the Blockstack menu bar item and select "Enable Development Mode"
- Clone this repo:
git clone https://github.com/blockstack/blockstack-browser.git
- Install node dependencies:
npm install
- Run
npm run dev
- Clone this repo:
git clone https://github.com/blockstack/blockstack-browser.git
- Install node dependencies:
npm install
- Run
npm run dev-proxy
to start the CORS proxy - Run
npm run dev
Note: npm dev runs a BrowserSync process that watches the assets in /app
, then builds them and places them in /build
, and in turn serves them up on port 3000. When changes are made to the original files, they are rebuilt and re-synced to the browser frames you have open.
Common problems and solutions:
-
The sign-in page does not load: These instructions run the Browser in development mode, which uses a different port (3000) than the production mode (8888). However, existing applications will direct you to
http://localhost:8888
on sign-in. You will need to manually edit the URL to change8888
to3000
and refresh the page. -
The sign-in page does not load with localhost:3000: If you have taken the above step and the page still does not load, check your
auth=
query parameter. If it starts with any number of/
characters, remove them and reload the page. For example, if yourauth=
query looks likeauth=///abcdef...
, then you will need to change it toauth=abcdef...
.
- Make sure you have a working installation of Xcode 9 or higher & valid Mac Developer signing certificate
- Make sure you have an OpenSSL ready for bottling by homebrew by running
brew install openssl --build-bottle
- Make sure you have
hg
installed by runningbrew install hg
- Run
npm install nexe -g
to install the "node to native" binary tool globally - Open the Blockstack macOS project in Xcode and configure your code signing development team (You only need to do this once)
- Run
npm run mac
to build a debug release signed with your Mac Developer certificate
Note: You only need to run nexe
once but the first build will take a while as nexe
downloads and compiles a source copy of node. Then it creates and copies the needed proxy binaries into place and copies a built version of the browser web app into the source tree.
Note: This has only been tested on macOS High Sierra 10.13
- Ensure you have valid Developer ID signing credentials in your Keychain. (See https://developer.apple.com/developer-id/ for more information)
- Follow the instructions in the above section for building for macOS.
- Open the Blockstack macOS project in Xcode.
- Select the Product menu and click Archive.
- When the archive build completes, the Organizer window will open. Select your new build.
- Click "Export..."
- Click "Export a Developer ID-signed Application"
- Choose the development team with the Developer ID you'd like to use to sign the application.
- Click "Export" and select the location to which you would like to save the signed build.
- Make sure you've cloned the repo and installed all npm assets (as shown above)
- Run
npm run web
We do project-wide sprints every two weeks and we're always looking for more help.
If you'd like to contribute, head to the contributing guidelines. Inside you'll find directions for opening issues, coding standards, and notes on development.
The Browser uses log4js
for logging. The macOS app uses macOS's unified logging
API, os_log
for logging.
On macOS, the Browser sends log events to the macOS
app's log server. These are then included in macOS's unified logging API. You
can view logs by starting Console.app
.
To see only Blockstack
process logs, filter by process by
typing process: Blockstack
in the search box. You can also filter for only log
entries proactively generated by the BLockstack project using this query:
subsystem:org.blockstack.portal subsystem:org.blockstack.core subsystem:org.blockstack.mac
If you'd like to see more detail, enable the inclusion
of Info and Debug messages in the Action menu. Please note that in our experience,
Console.app
doesn't always show debug messages in real time and only shows them
when doing a log dump as described below.
Blockstack logs are included in macOS's unified logging system. This allows us to easily collect a large amount of information about the user's system when we need to troubleshoot a problem while protecting their privacy.
- Press Shift-Control-Option-Command-Period. Your screen will briefly flash.
- After a few minutes, a Finder window will automatically open to
/private/var/tmp
- Send the most recent
sysdiagnose_DATE_TIME.tar.gz
file to your friendly developers.
The most important file in this archive is system_logs.logarchive
, which will
include recent system logs including Blockstack's logs. You can open it on
a Mac using Console.app
. The other files include information about your computer
that may help in diagnosing problems.
If you're worried about inadvertently sending some private information,
you can select the log entries you'd like to send inside Console.app
and copy
them into an email or github issue. To help us debug your problem, we ask that
at a minimum you enable Info and Debug messages and filter by process: Blockstack
.
More technical users (with admin permission) can use the sysdiagnose
command
to generate a custom dump of information.
This app uses the latest versions of the following libraries:
Along with many Gulp libraries (these can be seen in either package.json
, or at the top of each task in /gulp/tasks/
).
This repository is maintained by yukan.id.
- If you haven't already, follow steps 1 & 2 above
- If you haven't already run
npm run dev
ornpm run build
at least once, runnpm run build
- Run all tests in the
test/
directory with thenpm run test
command
- A single file can be run by specifing an
-f
flag:npm run test <PATH_TO_TEST_FILE>
Note: When running tests, code coverage will be automatically calculated and output to an HTML file using the Istanbul library. These files can be seen in the generated __coverage__/
directory.
When developing apps, the browser can be run in a docker test environment that is backed by the regtest bitcoin network, hence no real money involved.
The easiest way to get that setup is through docker containers for the api, the browser and the cors-proxy. There is a docker-compose.yaml file published in the Blockstack todo app repo that does this. To use it, first install Docker and stop any running Blockstack applications (blockstack-browser or blockstack api) then:
$ docker-compose up -d
This brings up
-
a
blockstack-core api
node that is backed- by a
bitcoind
instance running regtest and - by a
blockstack-core
node built from the test chain.
The initialization script generates 50 BTCs for the core wallet.
- by a
-
a blockstack-browser node. It uses bitcoin addresses that are mapped to regtest bitcoin addresses.
-
a cors-proxy to bypass origin policy issues.
The easiest way to work with this setup is in Incognito mode in your browser. Once the images have been pulled down and the containers are started you can open http://localhost:8888.
Choose the Advanced Mode setup and enter the API Password as blockstack_integration_test_api_password
-
You can send bitcoins from the core wallet to the browser wallet by opening the hidden url http://localhost:8888/wallet/send-core
-
You can inspect the mapped bitcoin addresses from the browser node to the regtest address by looking into the log file of the api node (execute
bash
in the api container and look at /tmp/blockstack-run-scenario.blockstack_integration_tests.scenarios.portal_test_env/client/api_endpoint.log). -
You can inspect the api password by looking into the client.ini file of the api node (execute
bash
in the api container and look at /tmp/blockstack-run-scenario.blockstack_integration_tests.scenarios.portal_test_env/client/client.ini) -
You can verify the blockstack version of the api node by running
curl localhost:6270/v1/node/ping