## Preamble

    Idea: 63-refactor-geth-packages
    Title: Refactor status-go node package
    Status: Draft
    Created: 2017-12-20

## Summary
`geth/` packages require refactoring as they are tightly coupled, hard to maintain and extend. In this idea, we would like to fix all these issues and make status-go architecture easier to work with for new core members and external contributors.

## Swarm Participants
- Lead Contributor: @adambabik
- Contributors:
  - @dshulyak (20h/week)
  - @adriacidre
- Tester/Evaluator: TBD

## Product Overview
We have a bunch of problems related to the `geth/` packages:
* `NodeManager` contains a lot of complexity, especially related to starting and stopping a node,
* `geth/account` unnecessarily depends on packages like `geth/rpc`,
* decouple `geth/transactions` from `geth/account`,
* remove huge, unnecessary interfaces,
* get rid of `geth/common` package.

In this idea, our goal is to come up with a better architecture design for these packages, removing unnecessary dependencies and huge interfaces. Overall, the whole repo will be easier to browse through for audit companies and external contributors.

### Product Description
It does not add any new features from the user perspective but it's a part of making status-go better tested, easier to extend and reason about, also by external contributors.

### Requirements & Dependencies
All existing tests should pass. If we need to change the interface in `library.go`, we need to communicate that and work with status-react team to figure out the best way to do it.

### Minimum Viable Product
Goal Date: 2018-02-02

Description: Minimal implementation of `Node` that can be started and stopped and an RPC client can be connected to it. It should be preceded with code examples how the new interface of `Node` will look like.

### Iteration 1
Goal Date: 2018-02-09

Description: The rest of the `Node` features is implemented.

### Iteration 2: [AccountManager cleanup](https://github.com/status-im/status-go/pull/753)
Goal Date: 2018-03-23

Description:
`AccountManager` should know nothing about Whisper or `node.NodeManager`, so on this iteration we will remove these dependencies.

### Iteration 3: [TransactionManager cleanup](https://github.com/status-im/status-go/issues/772)
Goal Date: 2018-03-30

Description:
`TransactionManager` shouldn't directly depend on `AccountManager` and `NodeManager`. In this iteration we want to remove these direct dependencies.

### Iteration 4: [common.NodeManager removal](https://github.com/status-im/status-go/issues/779)
Goal Date: 2018-03-30

Description:
`common.NodeManager` interface and all its mocks have to be removed from status-go. This interface is too large and is not useful at all.

### Iteration 5: `geth/common` package removal
Goal Date: 2018-04-06

Description:
`get/common` package contains everything. In this iteration, the goal is to remove it complete or at least move most of the functions to appropriate packages.

### Iteration 6: Simplify `node.NodeManager` API
Goal Date: 2018-04-13

Description:
1. Change its name to something more appropriate as it does not manage multiple nodes,
1. Rename methods indicating there is only support for one node: `StartNode -> Start`, `StopNode -> Stop` etc.
1. Allow starting and stopping associated managers (`jail.Manager` and `transactions.Manager`).

### Iteration 6: A PR in status-react
Goal Date: 2018-04-13

Description:
A PR in status-react is created with updated status-go version.

## Success Metrics
1. A tree of module dependencies is hugely simplified,
1. All tests pass,
1. There are no race conditions in tests.

## Exit criteria
1. All iterations are done. There is no threat that they can't be finished.
1. New version of status-go is merged into `status-react` develop branch.

## Copyright
Copyright and related rights waived via [CC0](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/).