Interactive testing environment

Hello Developer! So you've implemented your awesome, new Golem app and would like to deploy it to the Golem network and see your tasks executed there?

But of course, your app may still be far from perfect, the network may be congested, information from the execution units on providers next-to-impossible to acquire or maybe those nodes currently available to you are ill-suited to your particular task at hand.

All that means that testing your shiny new app by running it in on the actual Golem network may prove a slightly frustrating endeavor.

This is where Golem's Test Harness (or goth for short) comes in to help.

Goth is our carefully-tailored integration testing framework that is able to run a minimal, simulated network of Golem requestors and providers locally on a single machine, while at the same time providing a developer with some additional tools that allow them to inspect both the application itself and the communications between the nodes in an isolated, controlled environment.

This environment is self-contained and independent of any external components that the regular Golem nodes use - such as the Ethereum blockchain, the central communications hub or any other Golem nodes in the public network.

The TL;DR from the above is that with goth you can run your app on your machine in the same way as you'd run it on the Golem network, but with extra tools for debugging and investigating potential issues.

So, now that you know what goth is and how it can help you as the developer, let's follow up with what it takes to actually run the thing!