Managing Smart Contract Artifacts

developer beginner

A practical guide to using the compile_smart_contracts.py script for common development tasks like full recompiles, targeted updates, and cleaning your workspace.

Prerequisites

Maroo repository cloned locally.
Python 3.8+ and Node.js 18+ installed.

Task 1: Full Recompile of All Contracts

When you first set up your development environment, or after pulling major changes that affect multiple contracts, you should perform a full recompile. This ensures every artifact is up-to-date.

# 1. Ensure Hardhat dependencies are installed
cd contracts
yarn install

# 2. Run the compile script
cd ../scripts/compile_smart_contracts
python3 compile_smart_contracts.py --compile

Note: A full recompile can take a minute or two, as it processes every Solidity file in the repository.

Task 2: Quickly Update a Single Contract

While developing a feature, you'll often make small changes to a single interface file. Instead of a full recompile, you can use the --add flag to update only the artifact for that specific file. This is significantly faster.

# Example: You just added a new function to precompiles/okrw/IOkrw.sol
cd scripts/compile_smart_contracts
python3 compile_smart_contracts.py --add precompiles/okrw/IOkrw.sol

Task 3: Cleaning the Build Environment

If you encounter strange compilation errors or suspect a caching issue, it's a good practice to clean the build environment. The --clean command removes all generated artifacts, the aggregated source files, and the node_modules directory within the Hardhat project.

cd scripts/compile_smart_contracts
python3 compile_smart_contracts.py --clean

Warning: After running `--clean`, you must run `yarn install` in the `contracts/` directory again before you can compile.