This repo contains the IC SDK
: a Software Development Kit for creating and managing canister smart contracts on the Internet Computer (ICP blockchain).
For further reading:
- Reference documentation on internetcomputer.org
- Introduction to the ICP blockchain
- Internet Computer dashboard
- Developer docs for ICP smart contracts
- Sample code of ICP smart contracts
- IC wiki
The IC SDK
installation script installs several components in default locations on your local computer. The following table describes the development environment components that the installation script installs:
Component | Description | Default location |
---|---|---|
dfx | Command-line interface (CLI) | /usr/local/bin/dfx |
moc | Motoko runtime compiler | ~/.cache/dfinity/versions/<VERSION>/moc |
replica | Internet Computer local network binary | ~/.cache/dfinity/versions/<VERSION>/replica |
uninstall.sh | Script to remove the SDK and all of its components | ~/.cache/dfinity/uninstall.sh |
versions | Cache directory that contains a subdirectory for each version of the SDK you install. | ~/.cache/dfinity/versions |
There are a few components above worth expanding on:
-
dfx -
dfx
is the command-line interface for theIC SDK
. This is why many commands for the IC SDK start with the command "dfx ..
" such asdfx new
ordfx stop
. -
Canister Development Kit (CDK) - A CDK is an adapter used by the IC SDK so a programming language has the features needed to create and manage canisters. The IC SDK comes with a few CDKs already installed for you so you can use them in the language of yoru choice. That is why there is a Rust CDK, Python CDK, TypeScript CDK, etc... Since CDKs are components used the SDK, some developer choose to use the CDK directly (without the
IC SDK
), but typically are used as part of the wholeIC SDK
.
You can install the IC SDK
a few different ways.
sh -ci "$(curl -fsSL https://internetcomputer.org/install.sh)"
This command will install a binary compatible with your operating system, and add it to /usr/local/bin
.
Find a release for your architecture here.
in GitHub Action, using dfinity/setup-dfx
steps:
- name: Install dfx
uses: dfinity/setup-dfx@main
Once the IC SDK
is installed, get acquainted with its capabilities by entering.
dfx help
See our contributing guidelines here.
Building the IC SDK
is very simple:
cargo build
IC SDK
is released in two steps:
-
Publishing a new
IC SDK
release. -
Publishing a new
manifest.json
andinstall.sh
to instruct the installer to actually download and install the newIC SDK
release.
-
The release manager makes sure the
dfx
stable
branch points to the revision that should be released and that the revision is tagged with a version (like0.5.6
). -
The
sdk-release
jobset on Hydra tracks thestable
branch and starts evaluating shortly afterstable
advances. -
As you can see it only has the single job
publish.dfx
which is defined here in terms of thedfx
job. Note that thepublish.dfx
job only exists when the revision has a proper version tag. This prevents publishing of untagged revisions. -
Our CD system running at
deployer.dfinity.systems
is configured with thepublish-sdk-dfx-release
job. It will monitor the aforementionedpublish.dfx
job for new builds, whenever there's a new build it will download the output (the CD script) and execute it. -
As you can see the script also sends a message to the
#build-notifications
Slack channel so you can see when and if the SDK has been published.
After the IC SDK
has been released it's available for download but the install
script at https://sdk.dfinity.org/install.sh won't immediately install it. To
make sure the installer actually downloads and installs the new IC SDK
release the
manifest.json
file at https://sdk.dfinity.org/manifest.json has to set its
tags.latest
field to the new version. The following explains how to do that.
-
Edit the
public/manifest.json
file such that it points to the newIC SDK
version and make sure this is merged inmaster
. -
Similarly to releasing the
IC SDK
there's ainstall-sh
job that builds a CD script for publishing themanifest.json
andinstall.sh
to our CDN. -
This job is built on the
sdk
jobset which tracks themaster
branch. -
deployer.dfinity.systems
is configured with thepublish-sdk-install-sh
job which will monitor the aforementionedpublish.install-sh.x86_64-linux
job for new builds, whenever there's a new build it will download the output (the CD script) and execute it.
This section provides solutions to problems you might encounter when using the IC SDK
via dfx
command line
This command will remove the build directory and restart your replica:
dfx stop && dfx start --clean --background
You can deploy the Internet Identity canister into your replica alongside your project by cloning https://github.com/dfinity/internet-identity. From the internet-identity
directory, run the following command:
II_ENV=development dfx deploy --no-wallet --argument '(null)'
There are more notes at https://github.com/dfinity/internet-identity#running-locally that may be helpful.