Go is a language developed and used by some of the largest companies in the world for server/networking applications. Go is used to develop modules and provides optimum performance and flexibility to blockchain developers.
Docker is a software containerization tool used to spin up and shut down Kava nodes and allows software portability between different operating systems & environments. It is also used to spin up multiple Kava nodes locally and handles basic networking between them with `docker compose`.
Once Go & Docker are installed, update your bash_profile to include the go path and an alias command for one of the tools we will use to handle Kava node interactions
```
export PATH=/usr/local/go/bin:$PATH
export PATH=$HOME/go/bin:$PATH
export GOPATH=$HOME/go
export GO111MODULE=on
alias dkvcli='docker exec -it generated_kavanode_1 kvcli'
```
Make sure to source your bash profile or restart it for the changes to take place.
## Getting The Kava Repository & Development Tools
Once you have the core tools installed & set up, its now time to get the following repositories from Github:
- [kava](https://github.com/Kava-Labs/kava)
- Main Kava Repo that holds all modules
- [kvtool](https://github.com/Kava-Labs/kvtool)
- Dev tools to interact with a Kava node
## Set Up a Local Blockchain
Now that you have set up all the tools & repositories in your local machine its finally time to set up a local blockchain.
- Open a terminal and change into the ```kvtool``` directory.
- Ensure Docker is running.
- Run ```make install``` in your terminal which will install ```kvtool``` in your machine.
- Ensure Docker is running.
- Run ```kvtool testnet bootstrap``` this command will build against the master branch from the kava project, initialize the Docker containers and finally starts a local chain.
Now that you have a local chain running, you can start utilizing the ```dkvcli``` that we set up an alias for. If for whatever reason ```dkvcli``` doesn't work, you can try the following:
- Open a terminal and change into the ```kvtool``` directory.
- In the ```kvtool``` directory there should be a directory named ```full_configs``` change into it.
- Once at ```full_configs``` directory change into ```generated``` directory.
- Once you are at ```generated``` run the following command ```docker-compose exec kavanode bash```.
This should open up a bash terminal inside a docker container that will give you access to the ```kvcli``` command line interface. You should see something similar to the snippet below after typing ```kvcli help```:
```
bash-5.0# kvcli
Command line interface for interacting with kvd
Usage:
kvcli [command]
Available Commands:
status Query remote node for status
config Create or query an application CLI configuration file
query Querying subcommands
tx Transactions subcommands
rest-server Start LCD (light-client daemon), a local REST server
