feather/HACKING.md

Documentation for developers

Feather is developed primarily on Linux, but can also be built and debugged on macOS. Development on Windows is not currently supported.

If you are just looking to build Feather from source, we recommend following the instructions in BUILDING.md instead.

Setting up a development environment

Dependencies

Note: Feather uses Qt 5.15.* or Qt 6.2+. Make sure your distro's package manager provides these versions. If not, it is recommended that you install Qt manually using the online installer, which can be found here: https://www.qt.io/download (under open-source).

Arch Linux

pacman -S git cmake base-devel ccache unbound boost qrencode zbar qt6-base qt6-svg qt6-websockets libzip hidapi protobuf

Ubuntu 22.04

apt update
apt install git cmake build-essential ccache libssl-dev libunbound-dev libboost-all-dev libqrencode-dev libzbar-dev \
    qt6-base-dev libgl1-mesa-dev libqt6svg6-dev libqt6websockets6-dev libzip-dev libsodium-dev libgcrypt-dev \
    libx11-xcb-dev libprotobuf-dev libhidapi-dev

macOS

For macOS it's easiest to leverage brew to install the required dependencies.

brew install qt libsodium libzip qrencode unbound cmake boost hidapi openssl expat libunwind-headers protobuf pkgconfig zbar

Tor daemon

A Tor daemon is required to connect to .onion nodes and the websocket server. Development builds do not include the Tor binary by default, this can be enabled with -DTOR_DIR=/path/to/tor. We recommend running a local Tor daemon as this prevents Feather from spawning a child process and saves time.

Arch Linux

pacman -S tor
systemctl enable --now tor

Ubuntu Debian

apt update && apt install tor
systemctl enable --now tor

macOS

brew install tor
brew services restart tor

Clone Feather

git clone http://github.com/feather-wallet/feather.git
cd feather
git submodule update --init --recursive

Jetbrains Clion (IDE)

We recommend using Jetbrains Clion for Feather development. It integrates nicely with CMake and comes with a built-in debugger.

To pass CMake flags to CLion, go to File->Settings->Build->CMake, set Build Type to Debug and set your preferred CMake options/definitions. Add -DARCH=x86-64 to the CMake options. If you installed Qt using the online installer you may have to add -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=/path/to/qt/installation in the CMake options. More CMake options are documented below.

Run CMake (View -> Tool Windows -> CMake). Click on the 🔃 (Reload CMake Project) button.

Go to Run -> Edit configurations and make sure the feather target is selected. You can add any environment variables and program arguments here:

• For more verbose logging add MONERO_LOG_LEVEL=1 to environment variables.
• To start Feather in stagenet mode, add --stagenet to program arguments.

After the target is configured, Run -> Run 'feather' or press Shift + F10 to build Feather.

Building without IDE

To build Feather without an IDE:

• Linux: make release
• macOS: make mac-release

CMake

There are some CMake options that you may pass to control how Feather is built:

• -DLOCALMONERO=OFF - disable LocalMonero feature
• -DXMRIG=OFF - disable XMRig feature
• -DCHECK_UPDATES=ON - enable checking for updates, only for standalone binaries
• -DDONATE_BEG=OFF - disable the dreaded donate requests
• -DUSE_DEVICE_TREZOR=OFF - disable Trezor hardware wallet support
• -DWITH_SCANNER=ON - enable the webcam QR code scanner
• -DTOR_DIR=/path/to/tor/ - embed a Tor binary in Feather, argument should be a directory containing the binary