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macOS Build Instructions and Notes

The commands in this guide should be executed in a Terminal application. The built-in one is located in /Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app.

Preparation

  1. Install Xcode from the app store if you don’t have it already (it’s a dependency for qt5)

  2. Install the macOS command line tools:

xcode-select --install

When the popup appears, click Install.

  1. Install Homebrew.

Dependencies

Install dependencies:

brew install berkeley-db boost cmake jemalloc libevent librsvg miniupnpc libnatpmp ninja openssl protobuf python qrencode qt@5 sqlite zeromq
pip install pytest

See dependencies.md for a complete overview.

If you want to build the disk image with ninja osx-dmg (.dmg / optional), you need RSVG:

brew install librsvg

Build Bitcoin ABC

Before you start building, please make sure that your compiler supports C++17.

  1. Clone the Bitcoin ABC source code and cd into bitcoin-abc

     git clone https://github.com/Bitcoin-ABC/bitcoin-abc.git
 cd bitcoin-abc

  2. Build Bitcoin ABC:

    Configure and build the headless Bitcoin ABC binaries as well as the GUI.

    You can disable the GUI build by passing -DBUILD_BITCOIN_QT=OFF to cmake.

    It is recommended to create a build directory to build out-of-tree.

    mkdir build
cd build
cmake -GNinja ..
ninja

  3. It is recommended to build and run the unit tests:

    ninja check

  4. You can also create a .dmg that contains the .app bundle (optional):

    ninja osx-dmg

Disable-wallet mode

When the intention is to run only a P2P node without a wallet, Bitcoin ABC may be compiled in disable-wallet mode with:

cmake -GNinja .. -DBUILD_BITCOIN_WALLET=OFF

Mining is also possible in disable-wallet mode using the getblocktemplate RPC call.

Running

Bitcoin ABC is now available at ./src/bitcoind

Before running, it’s recommended that you create an RPC configuration file:

echo -e "rpcuser=bitcoinrpc\nrpcpassword=$(xxd -l 16 -p /dev/urandom)" > "/Users/${USER}/Library/Application Support/Bitcoin/bitcoin.conf"

chmod 600 "/Users/${USER}/Library/Application Support/Bitcoin/bitcoin.conf"

The first time you run bitcoind, it will start downloading the blockchain. This process could take many hours, or even days on slower than average systems.

You can monitor the download process by looking at the debug.log file:

tail -f $HOME/Library/Application\ Support/Bitcoin/debug.log

Other commands:

./src/bitcoind -daemon # Starts the bitcoin daemon.
./src/bitcoin-cli --help # Outputs a list of command-line options.
./src/bitcoin-cli help # Outputs a list of RPC commands when the daemon is running.

Notes