Felix Lange 7416b05b81
[DOCS] massive documentation update (#20229)
This PR:

- reorganizes all documentation pages so they live in the right category
- removes lots of legacy docs
- contains many improvements to active documentation pages

Geth user documentation is now spread across five major categories:

- Install and Build: installation and compile instructions
- Using Geth: this is for pages about general geth usage.
- For dApp Developers: this is for programming guides and functionality specific
   to dapp development. All the dev guides for mobile framework and Go APIs live here.
- JSON-RPC APIs: this has its own section because there is now a sub-page for
   every name space. I have also added an overview text that explains how to set
   up the API servers.
- For Geth Developers: this is for geth contributors
2019-11-05 13:46:00 +01:00

49 lines
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Markdown

---
title: Dev mode
sort_key: B
---
Geth has a development mode which sets up a single node Ethereum test network with a number of options optimized for developing on local machines. You enable it with the `--dev` argument.
Starting geth in dev mode does the following:
- Initializes the data directory with a testing genesis block
- Sets max peers to 0
- Turns off discovery by other nodes
- Sets the gas price to 0
- Uses the Clique PoA consensus engine with which allows blocks to be mined as-needed without excessive CPU and memory consumption
- Uses on-demand block generation, producing blocks when there are transactions waiting to be mined
You can specify a data directory to maintain state between runs using the `--datadir` option, otherwise databases are ephemeral and in-memory:
```shell
$ mkdir test-chain-dir
$ geth --dev --datadir test-chain-dir console
```
Once geth is running in dev mode, you can interact with it in the same way as when geth is running in other ways.
For example, create a test account:
```shell
> personal.newAccount()
```
Then transfer ether from the coinbase to the new account:
```shell
> eth.sendTransaction({from:eth.coinbase, to:eth.accounts[1], value: web3.toWei(0.05, "ether")})
```
And check the balance of the account:
```shell
> eth.getBalance(eth.accounts[1])
```
If you want to test your dapps with a realistic block time use the `--dev.period` option when you start dev mode:
```shell
geth --dev --dev.period 14 console
```