nimbus-eth1/README.md

# Nimbus: an Ethereum 2.0 Sharding Client for Resource-Restricted Devices

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## Rationale

[Nimbus: an Ethereum 2.0 Sharding Client](https://our.status.im/nimbus-for-newbies/). The code in this repository is currently focusing on Ethereum 1.0 feature parity, while all 2.0 research and development is happening in parallel in [nim-beacon-chain](https://github.com/status-im/nim-beacon-chain).

## Development Updates

To keep up to date with changes and development progress, follow the [Nimbus blog](https://our.status.im/tag/nimbus/).

## Building & Testing

_We currently do not guarantee that Nimbus will work on Windows._

### Prerequisites

(On Windows, a precompiled DLL collection download is available through the `fetch-dlls` Makefile target: ([Windows instructions](#windows)).)

#### Rocksdb

A recent version of Facebook's [RocksDB](https://github.com/facebook/rocksdb/) is needed - it can usually be installed using your system's package manager:

```bash
# MacOS with Homebrew
brew install rocksdb

# Fedora
dnf install rocksdb-devel

# Debian and Ubuntu
sudo apt-get install librocksdb-dev

# Arch (AUR)
pakku -S rocksdb
```

You can also build and install it by following [their instructions](https://github.com/facebook/rocksdb/blob/master/INSTALL.md).

#### PCRE

If you don't already have it, you will also need PCRE to build Nimbus.

```bash
# MacOS with Homebrew
brew install pcre

# Fedora
dnf install pcre

# Debian and Ubuntu
sudo apt-get install libpcre3-dev

# Arch (AUR)
pakku -S pcre-static
```

#### Developer tools

GNU Make, Bash and the usual POSIX utilities. Git 2.9.4 or newer.

#### Obtaining the prerequisites through the Nix package manager

*Experimental*

Users of the [Nix package manager](https://nixos.org/nix/download.html) can install all prerequisites simply by running:

``` bash
nix-shell default.nix
```

### Build & Develop

#### POSIX-compatible OS

To build Nimbus (in "build/nimbus"), just execute:

```bash
make # The first `make` invocation will update all Git submodules and prompt you to run `make` again.
     # It's only required once per Git clone. You'll run `make update` after each `git pull`, in the future,
     # to keep those submodules up to date.

make nimbus # build the Nimbus binary
```

Running `./build/nimbus --help` will provide you with a list of the available
command-line options. To start syncing with mainnet, just execute
`./build/nimbus` without any parameters.

To execute all tests:
```bash
make test
```

To pull the latest changes in all the Git repositories involved:
```bash
git pull
make update
```

To run a command that might use binaries from the Status Nim fork:
```bash
./env.sh bash # start a new interactive shell with the right env vars set
which nim
nim --version

# or without starting a new interactive shell:
./env.sh which nim
./env.sh nim --version
```

Our Wiki provides additional helpful information for [debugging individual test cases][1]
and for [pairing Nimbus with a locally running copy of Geth][2].

#### Windows

_(Experimental support!)_

Install Mingw-w64 for your architecture using the "[MinGW-W64 Online
Installer](https://sourceforge.net/projects/mingw-w64/files/)" (first link
under the directory listing). Run it and select your architecture in the setup
menu ("i686" on 32-bit, "x86\_64" on 64-bit), set the threads to "win32" and
the exceptions to "dwarf" on 32-bit and "seh" on 64-bit. Change the
installation directory to "C:\mingw-w64" and add it to your system PATH in "My
Computer"/"This PC" -> Properties -> Advanced system settings -> Environment
Variables -> Path -> Edit -> New -> C:\mingw-w64\mingw64\bin (it's "C:\mingw-w64\mingw32\bin" on 32-bit)

Install [Git for Windows](https://gitforwindows.org/) and use a "Git Bash" shell to clone and build Nimbus.

If you don't want to compile RocksDB and SQLite separately, you can fetch pre-compiled DLLs with:
```bash
mingw32-make # this first invocation will update the Git submodules
mingw32-make fetch-dlls # this will place the right DLLs for your architecture in the "build/" directory
```

You can now follow those instructions in the previous section by replacing `make` with `mingw32-make` (regardless of your 32-bit or 64-bit architecture):

```bash
mingw32-make nimbus # build the Nimbus binary
mingw32-make test # run the test suite
# etc.
```

#### Raspberry PI

*Experimental* The code can be compiled on a Raspberry PI:

* Raspberry PI 3b+
* 64gb SD Card (less might work too, but the default recommended 4-8GB will probably be too small)
* [Rasbian Buster Lite](https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/raspbian/) - Lite version is enough to get going and will save some disk space!

Assuming you're working with a freshly written image:

```bash

# Start by increasing swap size to 2gb:
sudo vi /etc/dphys-swapfile
# Set CONF_SWAPSIZE=2048
# :wq
sudo reboot

# Install prerequisites
sudo apt-get install git libgflags-dev libsnappy-dev

mkdir status
cd status

# Install rocksdb
git clone https://github.com/facebook/rocksdb.git
cd rocksdb
make shared_lib
sudo make install
cd..

# Raspberry pi doesn't include /usr/local/lib in library search path - need to add
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH

git clone https://github.com/status-im/nimbus.git

cd nimbus

# Follow instructions above!
```

### Development tips

- you can switch the DB backend with a Nim compiler define:
  `-d:nimbus_db_backend=...` where the (case-insensitive) value is one of
  "rocksdb" (the default), "sqlite", "lmdb"

- the Premix debugging tools are [documented separately](premix/readme.md)

- you can control the Makefile's verbosity with the V variable (defaults to 0):

```bash
make V=1 # verbose
make V=2 test # even more verbose
```

- same for the [Chronicles log level](https://github.com/status-im/nim-chronicles#chronicles_log_level):

```bash
make LOG_LEVEL=DEBUG nimbus # this is the default
make LOG_LEVEL=TRACE nimbus # log everything
```

- pass arbitrary parameters to the Nim compiler:

```bash
make NIMFLAGS="-d:release"
```

- if you want to use SSH keys with GitHub (also handles submodules):

```bash
make github-ssh
```

- force a Nim compiler rebuild:

```bash
rm vendor/Nim/bin/nim
make -j8 build-nim
```

#### Git submodule workflow

Working on a dependency:

```bash
cd vendor/nim-chronicles
git checkout -b mybranch
# make some changes
git status
git commit -a
git push origin mybranch
# create a GitHub PR and wait for it to be approved and merged
git checkout master
git pull
git branch -d mybranch
# realise that the merge was done without "--no-ff"
git branch -D mybranch
# update the submodule's commit in the superproject
cd ../..
git status
git add vendor/nim-chronicles
git commit
```

It's important that you only update the submodule commit after it's available upstream.

You might want to do this on a new branch of the superproject, so you can make
a GitHub PR for it and see the CI test results.

Don't update all Git submodules at once, just because you found the relevant
Git command or `make` target. You risk updating submodules to other people's
latest commits when they are not ready to be used in the superproject.

Adding the submodule "https://github.com/status-im/foo" to "vendor/foo":

```bash
vendor/nimbus-build-system/scripts/add_submodule.sh status-im/foo
# or
./env.sh add_submodule status-im/foo
# want to place it in "vendor/bar" instead?
./env.sh add_submodule status-im/foo vendor/bar
```

Removing the submodule "vendor/bar":

```bash
git submodule deinit -f -- vendor/bar
git rm -f vendor/bar
```

Checking out older commits, either to bisect something or to reproduce an older build:

```bash
git checkout <commit hash here>
make clean
make -j8 update
```

Running a dependency's test suite using `nim` instead of `nimble` (which cannot be
convinced not to run a dependency check, thus clashing with our jury-rigged
"vendor/.nimble/pkgs"):

```bash
cd vendor/nim-rocksdb
../nimbus-build-system/scripts/nimble.sh test
# or
../../env.sh nimble test
```

### Metric visualisation

Install Prometheus and Grafana. On Gentoo, it's `emerge prometheus grafana-bin`.

```bash
# build Nimbus with support for the HTTP endpoint
make NIMFLAGS="-d:insecure" nimbus
# the Prometheus daemon will create its data dir in the current dir, so give it its own directory
mkdir ../my_metrics
# copy the basic config file over there
cp -a examples/prometheus.yml ../my_metrics/
# start Prometheus in a separate terminal
cd ../my_metrics
prometheus # loads ./prometheus.yml, writes metric data to ./data
# start a fresh Nimbus sync and export metrics
rm -rf ~/.cache/nimbus/db; ./build/nimbus --prune:archive --metricsServer
```

Start the Grafana server. On Gentoo it's `/etc/init.d/grafana start`. Go to
http://localhost:3000, log in with admin:admin and change the password.

Add Prometheus as a data source. The default address of http://localhost:9090
is OK, but Grafana 6.3.5 will not apply that semitransparent default you see in
the form field, unless you click on it.

Create a new dashboard. Click on its default title in the upper left corner
("New Dashboard"). In the new page, click "Import dashboard" in the right
column and upload "examples/Nimbus-Grafana-dashboard.json".

In the main panel, there's a hidden button used to assign metrics to the left
or right Y-axis - it's the coloured line on the left of the metric name, in the
graph legend.

To see a single metric, click on its name in the legend. Click it again to go back
to the combined view. To edit a panel, click on its title and select "Edit".

[Obligatory screenshot.](https://i.imgur.com/AdtavDA.png)

### Troubleshooting

Report any errors you encounter, please, if not [already documented](https://github.com/status-im/nimbus/issues)!

* Turn it off and on again:

```bash
make clean
make update
```

## License

Licensed and distributed under either of

* MIT license: [LICENSE-MIT](LICENSE-MIT) or http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT

or

* Apache License, Version 2.0, ([LICENSE-APACHEv2](LICENSE-APACHEv2) or http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0)

at your option. These files may not be copied, modified, or distributed except according to those terms.

[1]: https://github.com/status-im/nimbus/wiki/Understanding-and-debugging-Nimbus-EVM-JSON-tests
[2]: https://github.com/status-im/nimbus/wiki/Debugging-state-reconstruction