truffle.md

Apparently testrpc development has been taken over by truffle, so they have a new tool:

https://github.com/trufflesuite/ganache-cli

Install, in one terminal tab run ganache-cli, and that will start the local blockchain. In the root directory run truffle migrate and your contracts will be deployed to localhost:8545.

You can access everything in node console like so:

const Web3 = require('web3');

const web3 = new Web3(new Web3.providers.HttpProvider("http://localhost:8545"));