**Built for mission-critical use**: Miners, service providers, and exchanges need fast synchronisation and maximum uptime. Parity Ethereum provides the core infrastructure essential for speedy and reliable services.
Parity Ethereum's goal is to be the fastest, lightest, and most secure Ethereum client. We are developing Parity Ethereum using the sophisticated and cutting-edge **Rust programming language**. Parity Ethereum is licensed under the GPLv3 and can be used for all your Ethereum needs.
By default, Parity Ethereum runs a JSON-RPC HTTP server on port `:8545` and a Web-Sockets server on port `:8546`. This is fully configurable and supports a number of APIs.
If you run into problems while using Parity Ethereum, check out the [wiki for documentation](https://wiki.parity.io/), feel free to [file an issue in this repository](https://github.com/paritytech/parity-ethereum/issues/new), or hop on our [Gitter](https://gitter.im/paritytech/parity) or [Riot](https://riot.im/app/#/group/+parity:matrix.parity.io) chat room to ask a question. We are glad to help! **For security-critical issues**, please refer to the security policy outlined in [SECURITY.md](SECURITY.md).
Parity Ethereum's current beta-release is 2.1. You can download it at [the releases page](https://github.com/paritytech/parity-ethereum/releases) or follow the instructions below to build from source. Please, mind the [CHANGELOG.md](CHANGELOG.md) for a list of all changes between different versions.
Make sure you have Visual Studio 2015 with C++ support installed. Next, download and run the `rustup` installer from
https://static.rust-lang.org/rustup/dist/x86_64-pc-windows-msvc/rustup-init.exe, start "VS2015 x64 Native Tools Command Prompt", and use the following command to install and set up the `msvc` toolchain:
Note, when compiling a crate and you receive errors, it's in most cases your outdated version of Rust, or some of your crates have to be recompiled. Cleaning the repository will most likely solve the issue if you are on the latest stable version of Rust, try:
2. Copy release to bin folder, write `sudo install ./target/release/parity /usr/bin/parity`
3. To configure Parity Ethereum, write a `/etc/parity/config.toml` config file, see [Configuring Parity Ethereum](https://paritytech.github.io/wiki/Configuring-Parity) for details.
Be sure to [check out our wiki](https://wiki.parity.io) for more information.
### Viewing documentation for Parity Ethereum packages
You can generate documentation for Parity Ethereum Rust packages that automatically opens in your web browser using [rustdoc with Cargo](https://doc.rust-lang.org/rustdoc/what-is-rustdoc.html#using-rustdoc-with-cargo) (of the The Rustdoc Book), by running the the following commands:
* **All** packages
```
cargo doc --open
```
* Specific package
```
cargo doc --package <spec> --open
```
Replacing `<spec>` with one of the following from the details section below (i.e. `cargo doc --package parity-ethereum --open`):
### Contributing to documentation for Parity Ethereum packages
[Document source code](https://doc.rust-lang.org/1.9.0/book/documentation.html) for Parity Ethereum packages by annotating the source code with documentation comments.
Example (generic documentation comment):
```markdown
/// Summary
///
/// Description
///
/// # Panics
///
/// # Errors
///
/// # Safety
///
/// # Examples
///
/// Summary of Example 1
///
/// ```rust
/// // insert example 1 code here for use with documentation as tests
An introduction has been provided in the ["So You Want to be a Core Developer" presentation slides by Hernando Castano](http://tiny.cc/contrib-to-parity-eth). Additional guidelines are provided in [CONTRIBUTING](./.github/CONTRIBUTING.md).