Prerequisites

Before we begin, if you haven’t already done so, you may wish to check that you have all the prerequisites below installed on the platform(s) on which you’ll be developing blockchain applications and/or operating Hyperledger Fabric.

Install cURL

Download the latest version of the cURL tool if it is not already installed or if you get errors running the curl commands from the documentation.

Note

If you’re on Windows please see the specific note on Windows extras below.

Docker and Docker Compose

You will need the following installed on the platform on which you will be operating, or developing on (or for), Hyperledger Fabric:

  • MacOSX, *nix, or Windows 10: Docker Docker version 17.06.2-ce or greater is required.

  • Older versions of Windows: Docker Toolbox - again, Docker version Docker 17.06.2-ce or greater is required.

You can check the version of Docker you have installed with the following command from a terminal prompt:

docker --version

Note

Installing Docker for Mac or Windows, or Docker Toolbox will also install Docker Compose. If you already had Docker installed, you should check that you have Docker Compose version 1.14.0 or greater installed. If not, we recommend that you install a more recent version of Docker.

You can check the version of Docker Compose you have installed with the following command from a terminal prompt:

docker-compose --version

Go Programming Language

Hyperledger Fabric uses the Go Programming Language for many of its components.

  • Go version 1.12.x is required.

Given that we will be writing chaincode programs in Go, there are two environment variables you will need to set properly; you can make these settings permanent by placing them in the appropriate startup file, such as your personal ~/.bashrc file if you are using the bash shell under Linux.

First, you must set the environment variable GOPATH to point at the Go workspace containing the downloaded Fabric code base, with something like:

export GOPATH=$HOME/go

Note

You must set the GOPATH variable

Even though, in Linux, Go’s GOPATH variable can be a colon-separated list of directories, and will use a default value of $HOME/go if it is unset, the current Fabric build framework still requires you to set and export that variable, and it must contain only the single directory name for your Go workspace. (This restriction might be removed in a future release.)

Second, you should (again, in the appropriate startup file) extend your command search path to include the Go bin directory, such as the following example for bash under Linux:

export PATH=$PATH:$GOPATH/bin

While this directory may not exist in a new Go workspace installation, it is populated later by the Fabric build system with a small number of Go executables used by other parts of the build system. So even if you currently have no such directory yet, extend your shell search path as above.

Node.js Runtime and NPM

If you will be developing applications for Hyperledger Fabric leveraging the Hyperledger Fabric SDK for Node.js, you will need to have version 8.9.x of Node.js installed.

Note

Versions other than the 8.x series are not supported at this time.

Note

Installing Node.js will also install NPM, however it is recommended that you confirm the version of NPM installed. You can upgrade the npm tool with the following command:

npm install npm@5.6.0 -g

Python

Note

The following applies to Ubuntu 16.04 users only.

By default Ubuntu 16.04 comes with Python 3.5.1 installed as the python3 binary. The Fabric Node.js SDK requires an iteration of Python 2.7 in order for npm install operations to complete successfully. Retrieve the 2.7 version with the following command:

sudo apt-get install python

Check your version(s):

python --version

Windows extras

If you are developing on Windows 7, you will want to work within the Docker Quickstart Terminal which uses Git Bash and provides a better alternative to the built-in Windows shell.

However experience has shown this to be a poor development environment with limited functionality. It is suitable to run Docker based scenarios, such as Getting Started, but you may have difficulties with operations involving the make and docker commands.

On Windows 10 you should use the native Docker distribution and you may use the Windows PowerShell. However, for the binaries command to succeed you will still need to have the uname command available. You can get it as part of Git but beware that only the 64bit version is supported.

Before running any git clone commands, run the following commands:

git config --global core.autocrlf false
git config --global core.longpaths true

You can check the setting of these parameters with the following commands:

git config --get core.autocrlf
git config --get core.longpaths

These need to be false and true respectively.

The curl command that comes with Git and Docker Toolbox is old and does not handle properly the redirect used in Getting Started. Make sure you install and use a newer version from the cURL downloads page

For Node.js you also need the necessary Visual Studio C++ Build Tools which are freely available and can be installed with the following command:

npm install --global windows-build-tools

See the NPM windows-build-tools page for more details.

Once this is done, you should also install the NPM GRPC module with the following command:

npm install --global grpc

Your environment should now be ready to go through the Getting Started samples and tutorials.

Note

If you have questions not addressed by this documentation, or run into issues with any of the tutorials, please visit the Still Have Questions? page for some tips on where to find additional help.