Cargo Odra

If you followed the Installation tutorial properly, you should already be set up with the Cargo Odra tool. It is an executable that will help you with managing your smart contracts project, testing and running them with various configurations.

Let's take a look at all the possibilities that Cargo Odra gives you.

Managing projects

Two commands help you create a new project. The first one is cargo odra new. You need to pass one parameter, namely --name {PROJECT_NAME}:

cargo odra new --name my-project

This creates a new project in the my_project folder and name it my_project. You can see it for yourself, for example by taking a look into a Cargo.toml file created in your project's folder:

[package]
name = "my_project"
version = "0.1.0"
edition = "2021"

The project is created using the template located in Odra's main repository. By default it uses full template, if you want, you can use minimalistic blank by running:

cargo odra new -t blank --name my-project

The third available template is workspace, which creates a workspace with two projects, similar to the one created with the full template.

By default, the latest release of Odra will be used for the template and as a dependency. You can pass a source of Odra you want to use, by using -s parameter:

cargo odra new -n my-project -s ../odra # will use local folder of odra
cargo odra new -n my-project -s release/0.9.0 # will use github branch, e.g. if you want to test new release
cargo odra new -n my-project -s 0.8.0 # will use a version released on crates.io

The second way of creating a project is by using init command:

cargo odra init --name my-project

It works in the same way as new, but instead of creating a new folder, it creates a project in the current, empty directory.

Generating code

If you want to quickly create a new contract code, you can use the generate command:

cargo odra generate -c counter 

This creates a new file src/counter.rs with sample code, add appropriate use and mod sections to src/lib.rs and update the Odra.toml file accordingly. To learn more about Odra.toml file, visit Odra.toml.

Testing

The most used command during the development of your project should be this one:

cargo odra test

It runs your tests against Odra's MockVM. It is substantially faster than CasperVM and implements all the features Odra uses.

When you want to run tests against a "real" VM, just provide the name of the backend using -b option:

cargo odra test -b casper

In the example above, Cargo Odra builds the project, generates the wasm files, spin up CasperVM instance, deploys the contracts onto it and runs the tests against it. Pretty neat.

Keep in mind that this is a lot slower than OdraVM and you cannot use the debugger. This is why OdraVM was created and should be your first choice when developing contracts. Of course, testing all of your code against a blockchain VM is a must in the end.

If you want to run only some of the tests, you can pass arguments to the cargo test command (which is run in the background obviously):

cargo odra test -- this-will-be-passed-to-cargo-test

If you want to run tests which names contain the word two, you can execute:

cargo odra test -- two

Of course, you can do the same when using the backend:

cargo odra test -b casper -- two

Building code

You can also build the code itself and generate the output contracts without running the tests. To do so, simply run:

cargo odra build

If the build process finishes successfully, wasm files will be located in wasm folder. Notice, that this command does not require the -b option.

If you want to build specific contract, you can use -c option:

cargo odra build -c counter # you pass many comma separated contracts

Generating contract schema

If you want to generate a schema (including the name, entrypoints, events, etc.) for your contract, you can use the schema command:

cargo odra schema 

This generates a schema file in JSON format for all your contracts and places them in the resources folder. If the resources folder does not exist, it creates the folder for you.

Like with the build command, you can use the -c option to generate a schema for a specific contract.

What's next

In the next section, we will take a look at all the files and directories that cargo odra created for us and explain their purpose.