Installation

The first step is to install btcd. See one of the following sections for details on how to install on the supported operating systems.

Requirements

Go 1.11 or newer.

GPG Verification Key

All official release tags are signed by Conformal so users can ensure the code has not been tampered with and is coming from the btcsuite developers. To verify the signature perform the following:

  • Download the Conformal public key: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/btcsuite/btcd/master/release/GIT-GPG-KEY-conformal.txt

  • Import the public key into your GPG keyring:

    gpg --import GIT-GPG-KEY-conformal.txt

  • Verify the release tag with the following command where TAG_NAME is a placeholder for the specific tag:

    git tag -v TAG_NAME

Windows Installation

Linux/BSD/MacOSX/POSIX Installation

go version
go env GOROOT GOPATH

NOTE: The GOROOT and GOPATH above must not be the same path. It is recommended that GOPATH is set to a directory in your home directory such as ~/goprojects to avoid write permission issues. It is also recommended to add $GOPATH/bin to your PATH at this point.

  • Run the following commands to obtain btcd, all dependencies, and install it:
git clone https://github.com/btcsuite/btcd $GOPATH/src/github.com/btcsuite/btcd
cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/btcsuite/btcd
GO111MODULE=on go install -v . ./cmd/...
  • btcd (and utilities) will now be installed in $GOPATH/bin. If you did not already add the bin directory to your system path during Go installation, we recommend you do so now.

Gentoo Linux Installation

  • Install Layman and enable the Bitcoin overlay.
  • Copy or symlink /var/lib/layman/bitcoin/Documentation/package.keywords/btcd-live to /etc/portage/package.keywords/
  • Install btcd: $ emerge net-p2p/btcd

Startup

Typically btcd will run and start downloading the block chain with no extra configuration necessary, however, there is an optional method to use a bootstrap.dat file that may speed up the initial block chain download process.