SparkBit is a Simplified Payment Verification (SPV) desktop client for the CoinSpark and Bitcoin protocols.
SparkBit relies on the following technologies:
- Maven as the build system, so the usual Maven processes apply. If you're not familiar with Maven then download it first and follow their installation instructions.
- A CoinSpark aware version of Bitcoinj for access to the Bitcoin network. The original Bitcoinj does not yet support CoinSpark.
- Bitcoinj Enforcer Rules to prevent dependency chain attacks
SparkBit uses JWrapper to create binaries for Windows, Mac, Linux.
SparkBit is based on a fork of MultiBit 0.5.18, which relies on other technologies which have been retained in the repository even though they are not currently being used.
- ZXing ("Zebra Crossing") for QR codes
- IzPack for creating installers for Windows, Mac, Linux
- XChange for access to several Bitcoin exchanges
SparkBit is based on MultiBit which itself depended on a special fork of Bitcoinj, due to legacy wallet serialization issues. The basis for SparkBit's bitcoinj is MultiBit 0.5.18's bitcoinj fork, specifically branch bcj-0.11.2-mb-alice, available from:
https://code.google.com/r/jimburton618-bitcoinj-coinbase-tx/source/checkout
SparkBit has added support for CoinSpark assets to its own version of this branch. You may want to review the modified library for yourself. You can clone from this fork:
https://github.com/coinspark/sparkbit-bitcoinj
The branch you should use for the SparkBit master code is: master. The branch you should use for the SparkBit develop code is: develop
Once cloned, you can install the custom SparkBit Bitcoinj library using
mvn clean install -DskipTests
This follows the "master-develop" or "Git flow" pattern.
There are 2 main branches: master and develop. The master branch is exclusively for releases, while the develop
is exclusively for release candidates. The develop branch always has a Maven version of develop-SNAPSHOT.
Every GitHub Issue gets a branch off develop. When it is complete and code reviewed it is merged into develop.
When sufficient Issues are merged into develop to justify a release, a new branch off develop is created with the release number (e.g. release-1.2.3).
The Maven pom.xml is updated to reflect the snapshot version (e.g. 1.2.3-SNAPSHOT).
Once the release has been tested and is ready to go live, the final act is to update the pom.xml to remove the SNAPSHOT suffix and merge it into master.
The master branch is then tagged with the release number. Tags are in the format v1.2.3 to distinguish them from branch names.
An announcement is made on the SparkBit website to alert everyone that a new version is available.
The important targets are:
mvn clean package -DskipTests
which will package the MultiBit project into sparkbit-x.y.z.jar where x.y.z is the current version
number. This is suitable for local development work.
If you want to generate a final jar file, use the following command:
mvn clean install -DskipTests
After some processing, you will have the following artifacts in the target directory:
- an executable jar = sparkbit-exe-full.jar
To build the platform installers, switch to your jwrapper directory, and follow the instructions there.
To run MultiBit from the command-line, you can use the following command
java -jar sparkbit-exe-full.jar
SparkBit is quite flexible and has several features only accessible to power users through the configuration file. This is discussed in more detail in configuration.md
If you would like to contribute please feel free to get in touch using this contact form or the usual Github tools. We are particularly looking for developers with the following skills to contribute:
- Experienced Java programmers
- Beta testers for checking the latest pre-release
All contributors must be OK with releasing their work under the MIT license.