bitcoin/doc/README.md
Wladimir J. van der Laan 22f0135df0 Rebrand to Bitcoin Core
Only messages for now, executable names and other file names
can be changed later if necessary and safe.

Do not do an all-sweeping change. Some occurences of Bitcoin-Qt need to
be kept:

- Applicationname: this is used to determine the registry entry names,
  we don't want to lose settings over a silly name change.
- Where it refers to the executable name instead of the product name.
2013-12-13 07:51:16 +01:00

3.4 KiB

Bitcoin 0.8.2 BETA

Copyright (c) 2009-2013 Bitcoin Developers

Setup

Bitcoin Core is the original Bitcoin client and it builds the backbone of the network. However, it downloads and stores the entire history of Bitcoin transactions (which is currently several GBs); depending on the speed of your computer and network connection, the synchronization process can take anywhere from a few hours to a day or more. Thankfully you only have to do this once. If you would like the process to go faster you can download the blockchain directly.

Running

The following are some helpful notes on how to run Bitcoin on your native platform.

Unix

You need the Qt4 run-time libraries to run Bitcoin-Qt. On Debian or Ubuntu:

sudo apt-get install libqtgui4

Unpack the files into a directory and run:

  • bin/32/bitcoin-qt (GUI, 32-bit) or bin/32/bitcoind (headless, 32-bit)
  • bin/64/bitcoin-qt (GUI, 64-bit) or bin/64/bitcoind (headless, 64-bit)

Windows

Unpack the files into a directory, and then run bitcoin-qt.exe.

OSX

Drag Bitcoin-Qt to your applications folder, and then run Bitcoin-Qt.

Need Help?

Building

The following are developer notes on how to build Bitcoin on your native platform. They are not complete guides, but include notes on the necessary libraries, compile flags, etc.

Development

The Bitcoin repo's root README contains relevant information on the development process and automated testing.

Resources

Miscellaneous

License

Distributed under the MIT/X11 software license. This product includes software developed by the OpenSSL Project for use in the OpenSSL Toolkit. This product includes cryptographic software written by Eric Young (eay@cryptsoft.com), and UPnP software written by Thomas Bernard.