Building neutrino from source for use with lnd

Question

I am trying to build neutrino, to use with lnd.

However I cannot find any installation instructions.

Someone else also asked for install instructions a few months ago and got no reply.

I have installed go version go1.19 linux/amd64.

Even though I am not familiar with go, I am trying to guess the steps.

This is what I tried first:

git clone https://github.com/lightninglabs/neutrino
cd neutrino
git checkout v0.15.0
make clean
make

This is the output from make:

 Compiling neutrino.
 go build -v github.com/lightninglabs/neutrino/...

I can't find any binaries after doing this.

Then, I tried the following:

 go build -v -o ~/neutrino *.go

This created an ar archive which is not executable:

 $ file ~/neutrino 
 /home/alexg/neutrino: current ar archive

Obviously I am doing something wrong.

Why can't I find the installation instructions? Can someone help?

Answer 1

From what I can tell, neutrino is not a standalone node but a library that lnd uses to be able to run in "neutrino" mode.

To use lnd with a neutrino backend, compile lnd from the source and then run with the following options:

 lnd --bitcoin.active --bitcoin.testnet --debuglevel=debug \
       --bitcoin.node=neutrino --neutrino.connect=faucet.lightning.community

(Taken from https://github.com/lightningnetwork/lnd/blob/master/docs/INSTALL.md#using-neutrino)

This issue also mentions that you may need to compile LND with experimental flags in order to use neutrino, although I am unsure if this is still the case.