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.

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 qt6-multimedia 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

Void Linux

xbps-install -S base-devel cmake boost-devel openssl-devel unbound-devel libsodium-devel libzbar-devel zlib-devel qt6-base-devel \
                qt6-svg-devel qt6-websockets-devel qt6-multimedia-devel libgcrypt-devel libzip-devel hidapi-devel protobuf \
                protobuf-devel qrencode-devel

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

Void Linux

xbps-install tor
ln -s /etc/sv/tor /var/service/.
sv start 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. 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:

mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
cmake --build . -j $(nproc)

On platforms without execinfo.h use cmake -DSTACK_TRACE:BOOL=OFF .. instead of cmake ..

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