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Setup

Stellar smart contracts are small programs written in the Rust programming language.

To build and develop contracts you need only a couple prerequisites:

Install Rust​

Linux, macOS, or other Unix-like OS​

If you use macOS, Linux, or another Unix-like OS, the simplest method to install a Rust toolchain is to install rustup. Install rustup with the following command.

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh

Windows​

On Windows, download and run rustup-init.exe. You can continue with the default settings by pressing Enter.

tip

The Stellar CLI uses emojis in its output. To properly render them on Windows, it is recommended to use the Windows Terminal. See how to install Windows Terminal on Microsoft Learn. If the CLI is used in the built in Windows Command Prompt or Windows PowerShell the CLI will function as expected but the emojis will appear as question marks.

If you're already using WSL, you can also follow the instructions for Linux.

Other​

For other methods of installing Rust, see: https://www.rust-lang.org/tools/install

Install the target​

Install the wasm32-unknown-unknown target.

rustup target add wasm32-unknown-unknown

Configure an Editor​

Many editors have support for Rust. Visit the following link to find out how to configure your editor: https://www.rust-lang.org/tools

A popular editor is Visual Studio Code:

Install the Stellar CLI​

The Stellar CLI can execute smart contracts on futurenet, testnet, mainnet, as well as in a local sandbox.

Install​

There are a few ways to install the latest released version of Stellar CLI.

Install with Homebrew (macOS, Linux):

brew install stellar-cli

Install with cargo from source:

cargo install --locked stellar-cli --features opt
info

Report issues and share feedback about the Stellar CLI here.

Documentation​

The auto-generated comprehensive reference documentation is available here.

Autocompletion​

You can use stellar completion to generate shell completion for bash, elvish, fish, powershell, and zsh. You should absolutely try it out. It will feel like a super power!

To enable autocomplete in the current bash shell, run:

source <(stellar completion --shell bash)

To enable autocomplete permanently in future bash shells, run:

echo "source <(stellar completion --shell bash)" >> ~/.bashrc

Users of non-bash shells may need to adapt the above commands to suit their needs.

Configuring the CLI for Testnet​

Stellar has a test network called Testnet that you can use to deploy and test your smart contracts. It's a live network, but it's not the same as the Stellar public network. It's a separate network that is used for development and testing, so you can't use it for production apps. But it's a great place to test your contracts before you deploy them to the public network.

To configure your CLI to interact with Testnet, run the following command:

stellar network add \
  --global testnet \
  --rpc-url https://soroban-testnet.stellar.org:443 \
  --network-passphrase "Test SDF Network ; September 2015"

Note the --global flag. This creates a file in your home folder's ~/.config/soroban/network/testnet.toml with the settings you specified. This means that you can use the --network testnet flag in any Stellar CLI command to use this network from any directory or filepath on your system.

If you want project-specific network configurations, you can omit the --global flag, and the networks will be added to your working directory's .soroban/network folder instead.

Configure an Identity​

When you deploy a smart contract to a network, you need to specify an identity that will be used to sign the transactions.

Let's configure an identity called alice. You can use any name you want, but it might be nice to have some named identities that you can use for testing, such as alice, bob, and carol.

stellar keys generate --global alice --network testnet

You can see the public key of alice with:

stellar keys address alice

Like the Network configs, the --global means that the identity gets stored in ~/.config/soroban/identity/alice.toml. You can omit the --global flag to store the identity in your project's .soroban/identity folder instead.

By default, stellar keys generate will fund the account using Friendbot. To disable this behavior, append --no-fund to the command when running it.