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Make setting up a regtest network easier

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Assessment

Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Newbie friendliness
35/100
Issue type
Feature
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Stale
Tech stack
cpp

Research direction

Begin by reproducing the Elements equivalent of bitcoind -regtest and record the behavior of -regtest, -chain=elementsregtest, -server=1, and the default coin setup. Read the startup handling for these options and the rescanblockchain RPC. Done means regtest setup is straightforward, the RPC port is visible, and a default chain provides usable coins without the workarounds described.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

Some things I have ran into many times in the past that are just really annoying for developer experience:

  • -regtest gives you bitcoin regtest. Should really make that equivalent to -chain=elementsregtest.
  • -server=1 doesn't print what RPC port is being listened to. This might be a bitcoind issue too, but anyone can google the default regtest RPC port for Bitcoin, I always spend 3 minutes trying to figure out what the one for elementsregtest is and eventually giving up and using -rpcport=8888..
  • There are no coins in the default chain. I know this might be a feature, but if no parent chain info is given, maybe there should be money. I tried adding -initialfreecoins=2100000000000000 -anyonecanspendaremine=1 also without success. So I'm now at figuring out how to add money. It seems like the rescanblockchain rpc is needed now.

All this which in Bitcoin is just bitcoind -regtest is a real pain for Elements..

Dominant language
C++
Stars
1.2k
Forks
418
Avg merge
1d 12h
Merged PRs (30d)
13

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