d12d8e52d2
fa51f37f18doc: Reword the Getting-Started section (MarcoFalke)fab5733f5ddoc: Remove good_first_issue.yml (MarcoFalke) Pull request description: Fixes https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/35399 IIUC, the good-first-issue label and template were meant to make it easier for completely new contributors to get started with something simple. However, I don't think the label and issue template are applicable anymore: * There are currently no issues with this label, and directing people toward an empty list seems pointless. * Historically the issue and label has been used rarely. 2026: once, 2025 twice, 2024 thrice. Source: https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues?q=state%3Aclosed%20is%3Aissue%20label%3A%22good%20first%20issue%22 * The template has been mis-used, according to https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/35399 Fix all issues by removing it, since it is clear that it is no longer actively used, nor applicable and possibly a net-negative overall. Of course, regular devs are still free to open issues of this kind as a normal issue, if they wish. However, having the template for this in this repo and tracking it via a label doesn't seem useful. Since removing the template and label requires rewriting the "Getting Started" section in `CONTRIBUTING.md`, I went ahead and also removed the mention of `Up for grabs` as good things for newcomers to work on. I don't recall the last new contributor that picked something up successfully. Also, `Up for grabs` is usually stuff that people lost interest in, or is no longer relevant. Instead I've added a sentence to encourage new contributors to help with critical and broad review, which will naturally guide them to good first follow-up issues to work on. Meta: I know this topic can be subjective and offer bike-shed potential, but I am happy to iterate a bit on this for a few days. ACKs for top commit: stickies-v: ACKfa51f37f18danielabrozzoni: ACKfa51f37f18sedited: ACKfa51f37f18darosior: ACKfa51f37f18furszy: ACKfa51f37f18winterrdog: ACKfa51f37f18Tree-SHA512: 9e6d7fe86262bee2df1e0af33ecfb5f77036da2d5d1832bb6afb08f4107d9313eec06d8b769966bf8ecaf8a4c574da5ff99509cc4b7fd9c53ea86788da29721c
Bitcoin Core integration/staging tree
For an immediately usable, binary version of the Bitcoin Core software, see https://bitcoincore.org/en/download/.
What is Bitcoin Core?
Bitcoin Core connects to the Bitcoin peer-to-peer network to download and fully validate blocks and transactions. It also includes a wallet and graphical user interface, which can be optionally built.
Further information about Bitcoin Core is available in the doc folder.
License
Bitcoin Core is released under the terms of the MIT license. See COPYING for more information or see https://opensource.org/license/MIT.
Development Process
The master branch is regularly built (see doc/build-*.md for instructions) and tested, but it is not guaranteed to be
completely stable. Tags are created
regularly from release branches to indicate new official, stable release versions of Bitcoin Core.
The https://github.com/bitcoin-core/gui repository is used exclusively for the development of the GUI. Its master branch is identical in all monotree repositories. Release branches and tags do not exist, so please do not fork that repository unless it is for development reasons.
The contribution workflow is described in CONTRIBUTING.md and useful hints for developers can be found in doc/developer-notes.md.
Testing
Testing and code review is the bottleneck for development; we get more pull requests than we can review and test on short notice. Please be patient and help out by testing other people's pull requests, and remember this is a security-critical project where any mistake might cost people lots of money.
Automated Testing
Developers are strongly encouraged to write unit tests for new code, and to
submit new unit tests for old code. Unit tests can be compiled and run
(assuming they weren't disabled during the generation of the build system) with: ctest. Further details on running
and extending unit tests can be found in /src/test/README.md.
There are also regression and integration tests, written
in Python.
These tests can be run (if the test dependencies are installed) with: build/test/functional/test_runner.py
(assuming build is your build directory).
The CI (Continuous Integration) systems make sure that every pull request is tested on Windows, Linux, and macOS. The CI must pass on all commits before merge to avoid unrelated CI failures on new pull requests.
Manual Quality Assurance (QA) Testing
Changes should be tested by somebody other than the developer who wrote the code. This is especially important for large or high-risk changes. It is useful to add a test plan to the pull request description if testing the changes is not straightforward.
Translations
Changes to translations as well as new translations can be submitted to Bitcoin Core's Transifex page.
Translations are periodically pulled from Transifex and merged into the git repository. See the translation process for details on how this works.
Important: We do not accept translation changes as GitHub pull requests because the next pull from Transifex would automatically overwrite them again.