The Blockstack Browser

Blockstack Browser

The Blockstack Browser allows you to explore the Blockstack internet.

Table of contents

• Releases
• Developing
• Building for macOS
• Building for Windows
• Building for the Web
• Contributing
• Logging
• Tech Stack
• Maintainer
• Testing

Releases

Download the latest release

Developing

macOS

Please note these instructions have only been tested on macOS 10.13

1. Download and install the latest release of Blockstack for Mac.
2. Start Blockstack
3. Option-click the Blockstack menu bar item and select “Enable Development Mode”
4. Clone this repo: git clone https://github.com/blockstack/blockstack-browser.git
5. Install node dependencies: npm install
6. Run npm run dev

Linux

1. Clone this repo: git clone https://github.com/blockstack/blockstack-browser.git
2. Install node dependencies: npm install
3. Run npm run dev

Note: npm dev runs a BrowserSync process that watches the assets in /app, then builds them and places them in /build, and in turn serves them up on port 3000. When changes are made to the original files, they are rebuilt and re-synced to the browser frames you have open.

Troubleshooting

Common problems and solutions:

• The sign-in page does not load: These instructions run the Browser in development mode, which uses a different port (3000) than the production mode (8888). However, existing applications will direct you to http://localhost:8888 on sign-in. You will need to manually edit the URL to change 8888 to 3000 and refresh the page.

• The sign-in page does not load with localhost:3000: If you have taken the above step and the page still does not load, check your auth= query parameter. If it starts with any number of / characters, remove them and reload the page. For example, if your auth= query looks like auth=///abcdef..., then you will need to change it to auth=abcdef....

Building for macOS

1. Make sure you have a working installation of Xcode >=9 and Node.js >=10.
2. Run npm run mac:release:dev to build an unsigned application bundle.
3. The output bundle is located at native/macos/export/Blockstack.app.

Note: This has only been tested on macOS High Sierra 10.13

Building a macOS release for distribution

1. Ensure you have valid Developer ID signing credentials in your Keychain. (See https://developer.apple.com/developer-id/ for more information)
2. Open the Blockstack macOS project in Xcode and configure your code signing development team (You only need to do this once)
3. Make sure you have an OpenSSL ready for bottling by homebrew by running brew install openssl --build-bottle
4. Open the Blockstack macOS project in Xcode.
5. Select the Product menu and click Archive.
6. When the archive build completes, the Organizer window will open. Select your new build.
7. Click “Export…”
8. Click “Export a Developer ID-signed Application”
9. Choose the development team with the Developer ID you’d like to use to sign the application.
10. Click “Export” and select the location to which you would like to save the signed build.

Building for Windows

Prerequisites:

• Wix Toolset v3.11.1 (download and run wix311.exe from https://github.com/wixtoolset/wix3/releases/tag/wix3111rtm)
• Visual Studio 2017 (https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/downloads/)

Run npm run win32.

This will:

• Run the webpack build.
• Setup the resources used by msbuild and the WiX msi project.
• Run msbuild to compile the native app and create the msi installation file.

The output file can be found at native\windows\BlockstackSetup\bin\Release\en-us\BlockstackSetup.msi.

This does not perform any code or installer file signing.

Building for the Web

1. Make sure you’ve cloned the repo and installed all npm assets (as shown above)
2. Run npm run web

Building for Linux (dpkg)

1. Install fpm
2. Run ./native/linux/make_deb.sh
3. A .deb package will be placed in ./native/linux/dist/

Contributing

We do project-wide sprints every two weeks and we’re always looking for more help.

If you’d like to contribute, head to the contributing guidelines. Inside you’ll find directions for opening issues, coding standards, and notes on development.

Logging

The Browser uses log4js for logging. The macOS app uses macOS’s unified logging API, os_log for logging.

macOS

On macOS, the Browser sends log events to the macOS app’s log server. These are then included in macOS’s unified logging API. You can view logs by starting Console.app.

To see only Blockstack process logs, filter by process by typing process: Blockstack in the search box. You can also filter for only log entries proactively generated by the BLockstack project using this query: subsystem:org.blockstack.portal subsystem:org.blockstack.core subsystem:org.blockstack.mac If you’d like to see more detail, enable the inclusion of Info and Debug messages in the Action menu. Please note that in our experience, Console.app doesn’t always show debug messages in real time and only shows them when doing a log dump as described below.

Sending logs to developers

Blockstack logs are included in macOS’s unified logging system. This allows us to easily collect a large amount of information about the user’s system when we need to troubleshoot a problem while protecting their privacy.

1. Press Shift-Control-Option-Command-Period. Your screen will briefly flash.
2. After a few minutes, a Finder window will automatically open to /private/var/tmp
3. Send the most recent sysdiagnose_DATE_TIME.tar.gz file to your friendly developers.

The most important file in this archive is system_logs.logarchive, which will include recent system logs including Blockstack’s logs. You can open it on a Mac using Console.app. The other files include information about your computer that may help in diagnosing problems.

If you’re worried about inadvertently sending some private information, you can select the log entries you’d like to send inside Console.app and copy them into an email or github issue. To help us debug your problem, we ask that at a minimum you enable Info and Debug messages and filter by process: Blockstack.

More technical users (with admin permission) can use the sysdiagnose command to generate a custom dump of information.

Tech Stack

This app uses the latest versions of the following libraries:

• React Rocket Boilerplate
• ReactJS
• React Router
• RefluxJS
• Redux
• Babel
• Webpack

And a few other smaller modules (these can be found in package.json).

Maintainer

This repository is maintained by hankstoever.id.

Testing

Run all tests in the test/ directory with the npm run test command. A single file can be run by specifing an -f flag: npm run test <PATH_TO_TEST_FILE>.

Note: When running tests, code coverage will be automatically calculated and output to an HTML file using the Istanbul library. These files can be seen in the generated __coverage__/ directory.

App Development

Run the browser in the Blockstack Test Environment

When developing apps, the browser can be run in a Docker test environment that is backed by the regtest bitcoin network, hence no real money involved.

Note: The Dockerfile creates an image that release on AMD64 architecture.

The easiest way to get that setup is through Docker containers for the api, the browser and the cors-proxy. There is a docker-compose.yaml file published in the Blockstack todo app repo that does this. To use it, first install Docker and stop any running Blockstack applications (blockstack-browser or blockstack api) then:

$ docker-compose up -d

This brings up

• A blockstack-core api node that is backed

  • by a bitcoind instance running regtest and
  • by a blockstack-core node built from the test chain.

  The initialization script generates 50 BTCs for the core wallet.

• a blockstack-browser node. It uses bitcoin addresses that are mapped to regtest bitcoin addresses.

• a cors-proxy to bypass origin policy issues.

The easiest way to work with this setup is in Incognito mode in your browser. Once the images have been pulled down and the containers are started you can open http://localhost:8888.

Choose the Advanced Mode setup and enter the API Password as blockstack_integration_test_api_password

Common Tasks

• You can send bitcoins from the core wallet to the browser wallet by opening the hidden url http://localhost:8888/wallet/send-core

• You can inspect the mapped bitcoin addresses from the browser node to the regtest address by looking into the log file of the api node (execute bash in the api container and look at /tmp/blockstack-run-scenario.blockstack_integration_tests.scenarios.portal_test_env/client/api_endpoint.log).

• You can inspect the api password by looking into the client.ini file of the api node (execute bash in the api container and look at /tmp/blockstack-run-scenario.blockstack_integration_tests.scenarios.portal_test_env/client/client.ini)

• You can verify the blockstack version of the api node by running curl localhost:6270/v1/node/ping