change top-level README from .rst to .md

- markdown is just simpler. less powerful but more than sufficient here - all the other doc files in this repo are markdown
2022-06-09 17:23:28 +02:00
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+# Electrum - Lightweight Bitcoin client
+
+```
+Licence: MIT Licence
+Author: Thomas Voegtlin
+Language: Python (>= 3.8)
+Homepage: https://electrum.org/
+```
+
+[![Build Status](https://api.cirrus-ci.com/github/spesmilo/electrum.svg?branch=master)](https://cirrus-ci.com/github/spesmilo/electrum)
+[![Test coverage statistics](https://coveralls.io/repos/github/spesmilo/electrum/badge.svg?branch=master)](https://coveralls.io/github/spesmilo/electrum?branch=master)
+[![Help translate Electrum online](https://d322cqt584bo4o.cloudfront.net/electrum/localized.svg)](https://crowdin.com/project/electrum)
+
+
+## Getting started
+
+_(If you've come here looking to simply run Electrum,
+[you may download it here](https://electrum.org/#download).)_
+
+Electrum itself is pure Python, and so are most of the required dependencies,
+but not everything. The following sections describe how to run from source, but here
+is a TL;DR:
+
+```
+$ sudo apt-get install libsecp256k1-0
+$ python3 -m pip install --user ".[gui,crypto]"
+```
+
+### Not pure-python dependencies
+
+If you want to use the Qt interface, install the Qt dependencies:
+```
+$ sudo apt-get install python3-pyqt5
+```
+
+For elliptic curve operations,
+[libsecp256k1](https://github.com/bitcoin-core/secp256k1)
+is a required dependency:
+```
+$ sudo apt-get install libsecp256k1-0
+```
+
+Alternatively, when running from a cloned repository, a script is provided to build
+libsecp256k1 yourself:
+```
+$ sudo apt-get install automake libtool
+$ ./contrib/make_libsecp256k1.sh
+```
+
+Due to the need for fast symmetric ciphers,
+[cryptography](https://github.com/pyca/cryptography) is required.
+Install from your package manager (or from pip):
+```
+$ sudo apt-get install python3-cryptography
+```
+
+If you would like hardware wallet support,
+[see this](https://github.com/spesmilo/electrum-docs/blob/master/hardware-linux.rst).
+
+
+### Running from tar.gz
+
+If you downloaded the official package (tar.gz), you can run
+Electrum from its root directory without installing it on your
+system; all the pure python dependencies are included in the 'packages'
+directory. To run Electrum from its root directory, just do:
+```
+$ ./run_electrum
+```
+
+You can also install Electrum on your system, by running this command:
+```
+$ sudo apt-get install python3-setuptools python3-pip
+$ python3 -m pip install --user .
+```
+
+This will download and install the Python dependencies used by
+Electrum instead of using the 'packages' directory.
+It will also place an executable named :code:`electrum` in :code:`~/.local/bin`,
+so make sure that is on your :code:`PATH` variable.
+
+
+### Development version (git clone)
+
+Check out the code from GitHub:
+```
+$ git clone git://github.com/spesmilo/electrum.git
+$ cd electrum
+$ git submodule update --init
+```
+
+Run install (this should install dependencies):
+```
+$ python3 -m pip install --user -e .
+```
+
+Create translations (optional):
+```
+$ sudo apt-get install python-requests gettext
+$ ./contrib/pull_locale
+```
+
+Finally, to start Electrum:
+```
+$ ./run_electrum
+```
+
+### Run tests
+
+Run unit tests with `pytest`:
+```
+$ pytest electrum/tests -v
+```
+
+To run a single file, specify it directly like this:
+```
+$ pytest electrum/tests/test_bitcoin.py -v
+```
+
+## Creating Binaries
+
+- [Linux (tarball)](contrib/build-linux/sdist/README.md)
+- [Linux (AppImage)](contrib/build-linux/appimage/README.md)
+- [macOS](contrib/osx/README.md)
+- [Windows](contrib/build-wine/README.md)
+- [Android](contrib/android/Readme.md)
+
+
+## Contributing
+
+Any help testing the software, reporting or fixing bugs, reviewing pull requests
+and recent changes, writing tests, or helping with outstanding issues is very welcome.
+Implementing new features, or improving/refactoring the codebase, is of course
+also welcome, but to avoid wasted effort, especially for larger changes,
+we encourage discussing these on the issue tracker or IRC first.
+
+Besides [GitHub](https://github.com/spesmilo/electrum),
+most communication about Electrum development happens on IRC, in the
+`#electrum` channel on Libera Chat. The easiest way to participate on IRC is
+with the web client, [web.libera.chat](https://web.libera.chat/#electrum).