BChain implementation in Go

Caveat: This is just a test to see that we can use gRPC bidirectional stream connections to implement this.

How to compile and run bchain

First ensure that you have Go installed, and $GOPATH set up, along with $PATH set to include $GOPATH/bin. (This should all be according to standard Go install instructions.)

Then compile bchain as follows:

go install

Then run the run.sh script to set up some helpful aliases:

./run.sh

Now open four terminal windows, and in each terminal start a bchain replica in the following order:

b4 (the tail)
b3 (proxy tail)
b2
b1 (the head)

The first three replicas will wait until the last replica (the head) is started. The head replica will send 10 messages and the tail will send an ack back to the head, all passing through the other replicas.