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# Consul [](https://travis-ci.org/hashicorp/consul)
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2013-11-04 22:15:27 +00:00
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2014-04-14 18:45:31 +00:00
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* Website: http://www.consul.io
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* IRC: `#consul` on Freenode
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2014-04-14 19:19:28 +00:00
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* Mailing list: [Google Groups](https://groups.google.com/group/consul-tool/)
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2014-04-14 18:45:31 +00:00
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2014-04-17 05:04:28 +00:00
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Consul is a tool for service discovery and configuration. Consul is
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distributed, highly available, and extremely scalable.
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2014-04-17 05:04:28 +00:00
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Consul provides several key features:
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2014-04-17 05:04:28 +00:00
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* **Service Discovery** - Consul makes it simple for services to register
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themselves and to discover other services via a DNS or HTTP interface.
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External services such as SaaS providers can be registered as well.
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* **Health Checking** - Health Checking enables Consul to quickly alert
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operators about any issues in a cluster. The integration with service
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discovery prevents routing traffic to unhealthy hosts and enables service
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level circuit breakers.
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* **Key/Value Storage** - A flexible key/value store enables storing
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dynamic configuration, feature flagging, coordination, leader election and
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more. The simple HTTP API makes it easy to use anywhere.
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* **Multi-Datacenter** - Consul is built to be datacenter aware, and can
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support any number of regions without complex configuration.
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Consul runs on Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows. It is recommended to run the
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Consul servers only on Linux, however.
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## Quick Start
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An extensive quick quick start is viewable on the Consul website:
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2014-04-14 19:20:48 +00:00
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http://www.consul.io/intro/getting-started/install.html
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## Documentation
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Full, comprehensive documentation is viewable on the Consul website:
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http://www.consul.io/docs
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## Developing Consul
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If you wish to work on Consul itself, you'll first need [Go](http://golang.org)
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installed (version 1.2+ is _required_). Make sure you have Go properly installed,
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including setting up your [GOPATH](http://golang.org/doc/code.html#GOPATH).
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Next, clone this repository into `$GOPATH/src/github.com/hashicorp/consul` and
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then just type `make`. In a few moments, you'll have a working `consul` executable:
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```
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$ make
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...
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$ bin/consul
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...
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```
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*note: `make` will also place a copy of the binary in the first part of your $GOPATH*
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You can run tests by typing `make test`.
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If you make any changes to the code, run `make format` in order to automatically
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format the code according to Go standards.
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