Maybe I just suck at this, but I've found that compiling the needed tools for various cryptocurrencies is kinda hellishly difficult. I've been trying to get this one going on OS X Mavericks for the past hour with little luck.
I'd really like to play with more of these, but the state of the documentation across the board for them (except Bitcoin) seems to be slim at best, non-existant and incorrect at worst.
Trying to figure it out and post my results to the Github issue tracker...
They all have basically the same dependencies and build process. Incidentally, I'm in the middle of setting up a docker image for just this purpose, so I can download any satoshi reference client fork and compile it with a build script without worrying about a malicious client stealing my wallets. If all goes as planned I should be able to just pass it the git repo address and use json-rpc to play around with it. <3 docker.
EDIT: I think people don't consider the security implications of downloading $altcoin_of_the_day_client and running it on the same machine they keep their bitcoin wallet on. It's like leaving all of your cash on your kitchen table and letting strangers walk in and out of your house all day. I'd say there's a pretty good chance that anyone downloading an altcoin client already has a bitcoin wallet sitting in their home directory, and it would be trivial for someone to release a malicious client and steal coins from unsuspecting users.
Damn. Good point. I was actually thinking of firing up an EC2 instance just to test/play with them (clearly, mining with AWS isn't generally profitable, but its ok to play with for a few hours).
Lemme know if you get the docker stuff up and running. I've been meaning to try that, but haven't yet.
I'd really like to play with more of these, but the state of the documentation across the board for them (except Bitcoin) seems to be slim at best, non-existant and incorrect at worst.
Trying to figure it out and post my results to the Github issue tracker...