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Gitian building

Setup instructions for a Gitian build of Bitcoin Cash Node using a VM or physical system.

Gitian is the deterministic build process that is used to build the Bitcoin Cash Node executables. It provides a way to be reasonably sure that the executables are really built from the source on GitLab/Github. It also makes sure that the same, tested dependencies are used and statically built into the executable.

Multiple developers build the source code by following a specific descriptor ("recipe"), cryptographically sign the result, and upload the resulting signature. These results are compared and only if they match, the build is accepted and uploaded to bitcoincashnode.org.

More independent Gitian builders are needed, which is why this guide exists. It is preferred you follow these steps yourself instead of using someone else's VM image to avoid 'contaminating' the build.

If you are running Debian, Ubuntu or Mac, see Running Gitian with Docker for a relatively straightforward setup and build process.

The instructions below use the automated script gitian-build.py which only works in Debian/Ubuntu. For manual steps and instructions for fully offline signing, see this guide.

Preparing the Gitian builder host

The first step is to prepare the host environment that will be used to perform the Gitian builds. This guide explains how to set up the environment, and how to start the builds.

Gitian builds are known to be working on recent versions of Debian and Ubuntu. If your machine is already running one of those operating systems, you can perform Gitian builds on the actual hardware. Alternatively, you can install one of the supported operating systems in a virtual machine.

You can create the virtual machine using vagrant or chose to setup the VM manually.

Any kind of virtualization can be used, for example:

Please refer to the following documents to set up the operating systems and Gitian.

Note that a version of lxc-execute higher or equal to 2.1.1 is required. You can check the version with lxc-execute --version.

MacOS code signing

In order to sign builds for MacOS, you need to obtain an archive which has been extracted from the free SDK.

cd ~/gitian-builder
curl -LO https://github.com/phracker/MacOSX-SDKs/releases/download/10.15/MacOSX10.15.sdk.tar.xz
echo "2408d07df7f324d3beea818585a6d990ba99587c218a3969f924dfcc4de93b62 MacOSX10.15.sdk.tar.xz" | sha256sum -c
# Should echo "MacOSX10.15.sdk.tar.xz: OK"
mkdir -p inputs
mv MacOSX10.15.sdk.tar.xz inputs

Alternatively, you can skip the macOS build by adding --os=lw below.

The gitian-build.py script will checkout different release tags, so it's best to copy it:

cp bitcoin-cash-node/contrib/gitian-build.py .

You only need to do this once:

./gitian-build.py --setup satoshi 22.2.0

Where satoshi is your GitLab name and 22.2.0 represents the most recent tag (without v) - use the latest released version available.

Build binaries

Windows and macOS have code signed binaries, but those won't be available until a few developers have gitian signed the non-codesigned binaries.

To build the most recent tag:

./gitian-build.py --detach-sign --no-commit -b satoshi 22.2.0

If running in a VM, to speed up the build use -j 5 -m 5000 as the first arguments, where 5 is the number of CPU's you allocated to the VM plus one, and 5000 is a little bit less than then the MB's of RAM you allocated.

Verify hashes

If all went well, this prints a report with hashes for each asset produced. E.g.:

[...]
Generating report
4dcfd0b27ff21736483f22aba1f6c4bd8845f0b2582f2f6c4314bd90488dddd1  bitcoin-cash-node-23.1.0-win-unsigned.tar.gz
1c2e737651b69f46cb2ab4e28d8da34168274d526330569c1b2f4d0dff4e11da  bitcoin-cash-node-23.1.0-win64-debug.zip
8f68a567d257107ba33c494c49e151d38678891de853eddc0ad2f391ae1c254e  bitcoin-cash-node-23.1.0-win64-setup-unsigned.exe
c73136187dcbbf124088029bd65e6303118563d1d04c5fca464f9492cd365e69  bitcoin-cash-node-23.1.0-win64.zip
0356cf228afb7da3bf945198f27fdadd972e1c5e5f6df57d863bb4c16e2836e0  src/bitcoin-cash-node-23.1.0.tar.gz

Confirm with other developers that the hashes match with theirs.

Lastly, follow the instructions at Gitian signing if you need to sign your builds too.