Post
Topic
Board Development & Technical Discussion
Merits 8 from 3 users
Re: How Should I proceed.
by
starmyc
on 09/07/2018, 08:46:10 UTC
⭐ Merited by suchmoon (5) ,Welsh (2) ,ETFbitcoin (1)
How Should I proceed.

To do what, exactly ? What is your goal ? This is the most important question right there.


I have gone through the book "Mastering Bitcoin" and I am not able to completely  grasp  it.  I just need a break from reading and need to do something practical.

Is "https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/" is the original copy?
How  should I  read the source  code?
Do I need to install some specific program /compilers  for it

The Bitcoin Core source code is hard to read. As you're asking if you need some kind of compilers or anything to build it, I assume you are not a skilled c++ software developer (which is not wrong!), but it will be even harder for you to read. You should not try this way.

If you want to understand how bitcoin works, installed the Bitcoin Core (wallet) client already compiled (on https://bitcoin.org/), and try it using the Testnet. After you got a grasp on how the wallet works, I would advise you to take a look to the RPC commands (accessible using bitcoin-cli). It will allow you to use the wallet, but using bitcoin core features even closer to the protocol. If you are a software developer, you can try to build a simple explorer, using those RPC commands, or even a blockchain parser. It is a nice way to understand Bitcoin even deeper, and not much an hard task. Once you've done all that, you'll be mostly ready to understand the Bitcoin Core's C++ code! :-)