What I use this for most is documentation and researching new blockchain features. Although, most of the time, I rely on the official testnet (testnet.steemitdev.com), sometimes I want to try a new branch that hasn't even made it to the official testnet. Or sometimes, the official testnet is down.
Using one command, you can deploy Tin Toy and play around with tiny toy version of the blockchain:
docker run -d -p 8091:8091 inertia/tintoy:latest
This is what I've been doing lately because at the moment, the official testnet is down. But that doesn't mean I have to stop working on documentation.
Once you have your testnet up and running, you can check exactly which version you're on using:
curl -s --data '{
"jsonrpc":"2.0",
"method":"database_api.get_version",
"params":{},
"id":1
}' http://localhost:8091 | jq
This will return something like:
{
"jsonrpc": "2.0",
"result": {
"blockchain_version": "0.23.0",
"steem_revision": "619a5a4fbcea5b93923b08c65ec0a0c696df13f4",
"fc_revision": "619a5a4fbcea5b93923b08c65ec0a0c696df13f4",
"chain_id": "46d90780152dac449ab5a8b6661c969bf391ac7e277834c9b96278925c243ea8"
},
"id": 1
}
You can copy the steem_revision value to a url, for example:
https://github.com/steemit/steem/commits/619a5a4fbcea5b93923b08c65ec0a0c696df13f4
That way, you can be sure of what code has been deployed, so you test the right things.
To do this without docker, see:
https://developers.steem.io/tutorials-recipes/setting-up-a-testnet
I originally announced Tin Toy about a year ago:
https://steemit.com/@inertia/tin-toy
There are also some extra things you can do with it if you're doing blockchain development or you want to build from a local branch of steemd:
https://steemit.com/@inertia/how-to-do-iterative-steemd-development-on-a-local-testnet