go-ethereum Source Code Walkthrough (Part 1)

Clone the source code from the project repository.

Directory Structure

accounts        Implements a high-level Ethereum account management system
bmt             Binary Merkle tree implementation
build           Mainly scripts and configurations for compilation and building
cmd             Command-line tools, further divided into many sub-tools, introduced one by one below
    abigen      Source code generator to convert Ethereum contract definitions into easy to use, compile-time type-safe Go packages
    bootnode    Starts a node that only implements network discovery
    evm         Ethereum Virtual Machine developer tool, provides a configurable, isolated code debugging environment
    faucet
    geth        The Ethereum command-line client; the most important tool
    p2psim      Provides a tool to simulate the HTTP API
    puppeth     A wizard for creating a new Ethereum network
    rlpdump     Provides formatted output of RLP data
    swarm       Entry point for the swarm network
    util        Provides some common utilities
    wnode       A simple Whisper node. Can be used as a standalone bootstrap node. Additionally, can be used for various testing and diagnostic purposes
    common      Provides some common utility classes
compression     Package rle implements the run-length encoding used for Ethereum data
consensus       Provides some Ethereum consensus algorithms, such as ethhash, clique (proof-of-authority)
console         The console class
contracts
core            Ethereum core data structures and algorithms (virtual machine, state, blockchain, Bloom filter)
crypto          Cryptographic and hash algorithms
eth             Implements the Ethereum protocol
ethclient       Provides an Ethereum RPC client
ethdb           The eth database (includes the actually-used leveldb and an in-memory database for testing)
ethstats        Provides network status reporting
event           Handles real-time events
les             Implements a lightweight subset of the Ethereum protocol
light           Implements on-demand retrieval functionality for Ethereum light clients
log             Provides human- and machine-friendly log information
metrics         Provides disk counters
miner           Provides Ethereum block creation and mining
mobile          Some wrappers for use on mobile
node            Various types of Ethereum nodes
p2p             Ethereum p2p network protocol
rlp             Ethereum serialization handling
rpc             Remote method calls
swarm           swarm network handling
tests           Tests
trie            An important Ethereum data structure; Package trie implements Merkle Patricia Tries
whisper         Provides the whisper node protocol

accounts

The accounts package implements wallet and account management for the Ethereum client. Ethereum wallets provide two modes: keyStore and USB. The ABI code for Ethereum contracts is also located in the account/abi directory. The ABI project doesn't seem to have much to do with account management. For now, only the account management interface is analyzed here. The specific implementations of keystore and USB are not covered at this time.