Welcome to AElf's official GitHub repo !

AElf is a blockchain system aiming to achieve scalability and extensibility through the use of side-chains and a flexible design. To support multiple use cases AElf makes it as easy as possible to extend/customize the system by providing easy to use tools and frameworks in order to customize the chains and write smart contracts. AElf will eventually support various languages that will let developers choose the one they are the most comfortable with.

For more information you can follow these links:

• Official website
• Documentation
• White Paper

This repo is where you will find the code that can use to run an AElf node and the command line tool used to interact with it. It also contains a tests folder that centralizes all the unit tests.

If you're looking for the js sdk, follow this link.

Because most of AElf is written in C# with the dotnet core framework, you will need to download and install the .NET Core SDK. Concerning the IDE, you can use any as long as it has support for C#. Good choices include Jetbrains Rider, Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code. Strictly speaking, if you only want to run the node, no need for an IDE since you can build and run with dotnet commands, but if you want to contribute to AElf, it's better to have more support for solution and project files.
Finally if you want to run the node you will have to install and run a Redis or SSDB for the nodes data.

Note that, if you intend to develop AElf itself you will have to install protobuf/gRPC.

sh scripts/build.sh

Our tests are in the test folder, in order to run you only have to execute the following script:

sh scripts/test.sh

If you have a reasonable understanding of blockchain technology and at least some notions of C# you can of course contribute. We also appreciate other types of contributions such as documentation improvements or even correcting typos in the code if you spot any.

We expect every contributor to be respectful and constructive so that everyone has a positive experience, you can find out more in our code of conduct.

We currently only use GitHub for tracking issues, feature request and pull requests. If you're not familiar with these tools have a look at the GitHub documentation.

If you think you have found a bug in our system feel free to open a GitHub issue, but first:

• check with GitHub's search engine that the bug doesn't already exist.
• in the request give as much information as possible such as: the OS, the version of AElf, how to reproduce...

We also use the GitHub issue tracker for features. If you think that some piece of functionality is missing in AElf, you can open an issue with the following in mind:

• check for similare feature requests already open.
• provide as much detail and context as possible.
• be as convincing as possible as to why we need this feature and how everybody can benefit from it.

For any non trivial modification of the code, the pull requests should be associated with an issue that was previously discussed. During the time you implement and are not yet ready for review, prefix the PR's title with [WIP] and also don't forget to do the following:

• add a description in the pull request saying which issue you are fixing/implementing.
• be as explicit as possible about the changes in the description.
• add the tests corresponding to your modifications.
• pull requests should be made against the dev branch.

When you are ready for a review by the core team, just remove [WIP] from your PR's title and others will review. This will either lead to a discussion or to a refactor of the code. The Travis CI system makes sure that every pull request is built for Windows, Linux, and macOS, and that unit tests are run automatically. The CI passing is a pre-condition for the PR to be merged as well as the approval from the core team.

We use Semantic Versioning (SemVer) for versioning, if you're intereted in closely following AElf's developement please check out the SemVer docs.

AElf is licenced under MIT