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@taqueria/plugin-flextesa

Flextesa is a flexible Tezos sandbox environment that's easy to work with. It runs a Tezos node and network in a Docker container on your local machine

This plugin provides the ability to easily configure and run Flextesa sandbox instances within Taqueria that you can use for development and testing

Overview

With the Flextesa plugin you configure various sandboxes for use in Taqueria that you can start, stop, and query from the CLI and Visual Studio Code extension

Some helpful things to know:

  • Multiple sandboxes can be configured and run concurrently
  • You can configure the Tezos protocol for each sandbox to test against current, and future network upgrades
  • Accounts and balances will be initialized each time a sandbox is started
  • Sandboxes can be added to Taqueria environments and then targeted from the CLI using the --env [envName] option

Requirements

  • Taqueria v0.42.0 or later
  • Node.js v18.18 or later.
  • Docker v20.10.12 or later

Installation

The Flextesa plugin is distributed as an NPM package that can be installed and uninstalled on a project from the Taqueria CLI

To install the Flextesa plugin on a Taqueria project, navigate to the project folder and run:

taq install @taqueria/plugin-flextesa
note

The first time you start a sandbox, it might take several minutes to start. This is expected behavior as it takes time to download the flextesa docker image to your computer

Once installed, you can confirm functionality by running the command taq start sandbox which will start a sandbox with the default local configuration

note

You can override the Flextesa version used by the plugin by creating the environment variable TAQ_FLEXTESA_IMAGE and setting it to your desired Flextesa Docker image

CLI Commands

The Flextesa plugin allows you to start, stop, and query the sandboxes configured in .taq/config.json from the CLI

The following commands are available from the CLI:

  • taq start sandbox [sandboxName]
  • taq stop sandbox [sandboxName]
  • taq list accounts [sandboxName]
  • taq bake [sandboxName]
  • taq show-protocols [sandboxName]
note

In the tasks above, [sandboxName] can be substituted with [environmentName] if using Taqueria v0.28.0.

Plugin Configuration

Configuration is done in the project's .taq/config.json file. Here you can configure additional sandboxes

The Default Development Environment

note

Note, as of Taqueria v0.28.0, the schema has been updated. The examples below will not work if using an earlier version of Taqueria.

Taqueria has the concept of an environment which can be targeted when invoking a Taqueria task. An environment provides an execution context that facilitate the means for plugins to do the following:

  • Distinguishing when a testnet is being targeted versus a flextesa sandbox (or something some other environment type provided by another plugin)
  • Retrieve the addresses of contracts deployed to the environment
  • Separate account instances from one environment to another

There are different types of environments, but as of v0.28.0, we support two environment types: a) simple; b) flextesa

In this doc, we will focus on the flextesa environment type.

If an explicit environment isn't specified, then Taqueria will invoke tasks using the default environment, which is specified by the environmentDefault key in your .taq/config.json file.

To use a different environment, you may specify taq --env [environmentName] flag when invoking a Taqueria task and that environment will be used as the execution context for that particular task invocation.

When a Taqueria project is initialized using taq init, an environment is created for you called development, which is also configured as the default environment. This environment is of type flextesa and configured as shown below:

"environments": {
"development": {
"type": "flextesa",
"label": "Local Tezos Sandbox"
},
...
},

Accounts

Accounts are defined in the accounts property of config.json and are global to the project. These accounts are referred to as declared accounts.

Taqueria provides five default declared accounts in the default configuration:

"accounts": {
"bob": {
"balance": {
"amount": "30_000_000",
"units": "mutez"
}
},
"alice": {
"balance": {
"amount": "30_000_000",
"units": "mutez"
}
},
"john": {
"balance": {
"amount": "30_000_000",
"units": "mutez"
}
},
"jane": {
"balance": {
"amount": "30_000_000",
"units": "mutez"
}
},
"joe": {
"balance": {
"amount": "30_000_000",
"units": "mutez"
}
}
},

When the sandbox for this environment is started, the declared accounts defined in the configuration will be instantiated. This means that they will be created on the sandbox and a config.local.development.json file will be created for you. This file is environment and developer specific, and should not be checked into source control. It's contents will resemble the following:

{
"accountsDefault": "bob",
"accounts": {
"bob": {
"encryptedKey": "edpkurPsQ8eUApnLUJ9ZPDvu98E8VNj4KtJa1aZr16Cr5ow5VHKnz4",
"publicKeyHash": "tz1aSkwEot3L2kmUvcoxzjMomb9mvBNuzFK6",
"secretKey": "unencrypted:edsk3RFfvaFaxbHx8BMtEW1rKQcPtDML3LXjNqMNLCzC3wLC1bWbAt"
},
"alice": {
"encryptedKey": "edpkvGfYw3LyB1UcCahKQk4rF2tvbMUk8GFiTuMjL75uGXrpvKXhjn",
"publicKeyHash": "tz1VSUr8wwNhLAzempoch5d6hLRiTh8Cjcjb",
"secretKey": "unencrypted:edsk3QoqBuvdamxouPhin7swCvkQNgq4jP5KZPbwWNnwdZpSpJiEbq"
},
"john": {
"encryptedKey": "edpktt6t2ENhxiQqun6bXPPWC6tFVvNPTDRh1gEPGX4BgDgbDnmGzP",
"publicKeyHash": "tz1Zwoh1QCVAvJ4sVTojMp9pLYp6Ji4NoZy6",
"secretKey": "unencrypted:edsk3Un2KRUUoWZufi914HQem96ejVFnkyD8GXRPUSkgqy5etsYXEN"
},
"jane": {
"encryptedKey": "edpkvS6TDSWcqqj3EJi3NRrCMyN7oNw1B3Hp37R19tMThqM8YNhAuS",
"publicKeyHash": "tz1aHUAC4oviwJuZF1EvVSvFz7cu9KMNYBph",
"secretKey": "unencrypted:edsk3UkdS1UBfTBkMAoFxmfdmUHmCdNhTzDJ1cSJuZhU1b6k6fZZoQ"
},
"joe": {
"encryptedKey": "edpkuT1QYPYbLLQz9dXhQS33ncsixxeGHbNGmntPTR4VBbWmskHPrV",
"publicKeyHash": "tz1MVGjgD1YtAPwohsSfk8i3ZiT1yEGM2YXB",
"secretKey": "unencrypted:edsk3Un2FU9Zeb4KEoATWdpAqcX5JArMUj2ew8S4SuzhPRDmGoqNx2"
}
},
"label": "Local Tezos Sandbox",
"rpcUrl": "http://localhost:20000"
}

Adding/Editing a New Sandbox Configuration

Sandbox configurations are added as key/value pairs to the main environments object using the format:

environmentName : { sandboxConfigObject }

Inside the sandboxConfigObject, there are the following properties you can configure:

caution

Changes to a your flextesa environment will not take effect till you restart the sandbox.

'type'

Indicates which type of environment is defined.

note

Environment types are provided by plugins, except for the simple type which is built-in to Taqueria, and used to specify a remote RPC node.

'label'

An arbitrary string used to describe a particular configuration

'protocol'

A string value which accepts valid Tezos protocol hashes. This value will configure the sandbox to run a particular version of the Tezos network which can be used for testing upcoming network changes, or testing backwards-compatibility.

To see a list of protocols supported by the flextesa plugin, please run: taq show-protocols [environmentName].

'rpcUrl'

A string which corresponds to the local URL you would like the sandbox to run on

accountsDefault

The name of the account to use by default when a task requires an account to perform its function.

annotations

Used to specify configuration options specific to the environment type, which can then be referenced and interpreted by the plugin which provided the associated environment type.

note

In addition to the fields above, when a sandbox is first started, a list of accounts specific to the sandbox configuration will be generated and appended to the sandboxConfigObject. These accounts will respect the declared balances from the accounts field in the root of your config.json

Baking

As of Taqueria v0.28.0, the ability to configure how baking works for a sandbox is available.

Changing the block time

The default block time for a flextesa sandbox is 5, but can be configured in your .taq/config.json file:

{
"environments": {
"development": {
"type": "flextesa",
"label": "Local Tezos Sandbox",
"annotations": {
"block_time": 1
}
},
...
},
...
}

The block_time property can be set to any integer greater than 1.

Disable Baking

By default, a flextesa sandbox will launch a baker daemon which will bake blocks according to the provisioned block time. However, baking can be disabled to give developers more flexibility and control of the baking process. To disable baking, adjust your environment in your .taq/config.json file:

{
"environments": {
"development": {
"type": "flextesa",
"label": "Local Tezos Sandbox",
"annotations": {
"block_time": 1,
"baking": "disabled"
}
},
...
},
...
}

After restarting your sandbox, operations can be injected to the flextesa node, but those operations will reside in the mempool and not be baked until you manually run:

taq bake [sandboxName]
Baking on Demand

Rather than have to run taq bake manually each time wish to bake a block, you can do the following to bake immediately after an operation is injected:

  1. Set the block time to 1.
  2. Run bake task in watch mode: taq bake -w [sandboxName]

Flextesa Plugin Task Registry

The start sandbox Task

attributevalue
task'start sandbox'
command'start sandbox [sandboxName]'
aliases['start flextesa']

The stop sandbox Task

attributevalue
task'stop sandbox'
command'stop sandbox [sandboxName]'
aliases['stop flextesa']

The list accounts Task

attributevalue
task'list accounts'
command'list accounts [sandboxName]'
aliases[ ]

The list accounts Task

attributevalue
task'list accounts'
command'list accounts [sandboxName]'
aliases[ ]

The taq bake Task

attributevalue
task'bake'
command'bake [sandboxName]'
aliases['b']

The show-protocols Task

attributevalue
task'show-protocols'
command'show-protocols [sandboxName]'
aliases['list protocols']

Plugin Architecture

This is a plugin developed for Taqueria built on NodeJS using the Taqueria Node SDK and distributed via NPM