bitcoin-s/docs/applications/cli.md

id	title
cli	cli

Bitcoin-s command line interface

The cli project is meant to be a bitcoin-s command line interface (cli). It uses graalvm native image to create a native executable that circumvents the jvm for fast start up time.

Building the command line interface

Installing graalvm native image

First to build the command line interface you need to have the graal jdk installed. This can be installed on graalvm's github.

Make sure you install the prerequisites for installing the native-image executable.

If you do not have the native-image executable installed, you need to install it with

./graalvm-ce-java8-19.3.0/bin/gu install native-image

Once you have the graalvm installed you should be able to verify you have the native-image exeuctable installed by running

$ native-image --help

If your command did not work, make sure you can find the native-image executable on your PATH.

Building the native image

Now that you have graalvm native image installed, you should be able to build the cli with. It is important to note that this only works with Scala 2.12.x. I'm unsure of why the native image build fails with Scala 2.13.x

$ sbt ++2.12.10 cli/graalvm-native-image:packageBin

After running that command you should find the executable here:

bitcoin-s/app/cli/target/graalvm-native-image

Executing commands

You can ask the client for help with

 ./app/cli/target/graalvm-native-image/bitcoin-s-cli --help
Usage: bitcoin-s-cli [options] [<cmd>]

  -n, --network <value>  Select the active network.
  --debug                Print debugging information
  -h, --help             Display this help message and exit
  <cmd>                  The command and arguments to be executed. Try bitcoin-s-cli help for a list of all commands

Now you are are ready to start the server that the cli sends commands to. Take a look at our server documentation on how to build and start the server.