start local chain with docker-compose

[dckc]

@toliaqat recently suggested this, and the idea has been growing on me.

As much as I'd like to us meet the npm install market expectations for installing the SDK (#3857), I think much of our near-term audience is likely to have some exposure to node operations and docker. Installing agd from npm (#8033) is a good goal to help JS devs, but it looks like sort of a lot of work, and I think it's useful to provide a tool for those familiar with docker-compose.

[dckc]

Related Work

We have some experience supporting docker-compose:

• Setting up an Agoric Dapp Client with docker compose · Agoric/agoric-sdk Wiki

But that's for ag-solo as a client of devnet.

We also have instagoric but I don't get the impression that's the sort of thing you can start in 2 or 3 minutes.

We support agoric start as a way to start a local chain, but in practice we don't use it much because it doesn't fund the provision pool, set up vaults governance, etc. For some time we tended to use scenario2 in the cosmic-swingset Makefile but much of the related effort moved to the [Dockerized Chain Upgrade Tester](https://github.com/Agoric/agoric-sdk/tree/master/packages/deployment/upgrade-test#dockerized-chain-upgrade-tester), which is now migrating to its own agoric-3-proposals repo.

[mhofman]

For a local chain we can rely on prebuilt images, but my concern is about requiring docker for dapp developers. The original comment talks about "node operators". How does a "local chain" intersect with "node operators" ?

[dckc]

fair point. Maybe what I meant was:

In the short term, much of our audience is exposed to node operations as well as JD dev norms.
For example, NEAR docs for Creating a Local Development Environment say:

Kurtosis has created an easy way to spin up a local NEAR testing environment using a Docker container.

[dckc]

Prototype boots

Presuming we publish the results of the prerequisite make build step, this kinda worked on the first try:

• docker-compose.yml

It's small enough to just copy it here:

version: '3.5'

services:
  agd:
    image: agoric/upgrade-test:agoric-upgrade-11
    ports:
      - 26656:26656
      - 26657:26657
      - 1317:1317
    environment:
      DEST: 1
      DEBUG: "SwingSet:ls,SwingSet:vat"
    volumes:
      - .:/workspace
    entrypoint: /usr/src/agoric-sdk/upgrade-test-scripts/start_to_to.sh

To run it: docker-compose up -d.

To take a look at logs: docker-compose logs|less -R.

agd client commands

You can make agd an alias for running agd from the container:

alias agd="docker-compose exec agd agd"

Then agd status and the like will work, as well as...

$ agd query vstorage children published.priceFeed
children:
- ATOM-USD_price_feed

Goal: simple game dapp

Next step: try to run the simple game dapp

cc @sufyaankhan @kbennett2000 @0xpatrickdev @turadg @samsiegart

[dckc]

@0xpatrickdev and I got the simple game dapp working yesterday. Here's an idea for office hours:

1. start a local chain with docker-compose (start local chain with docker-compose #8480)
   • presumes publication of a docker image that you currently have to build locally
2. Note gameAssetContract.js is ~50LOC. agoric run ... to build bundles. Install contract bundles using Gov Proposal Hub
   • small diversion: open a vault to mint enough IST to install the bundle
   • 2nd bundle is a bit awkward; here's hoping for other ways to link modules in core-eval proposals
3. Propose core-eval with Gov Proposal Hub
   • small diversion: add deposit with CLI, since it's not yet integrated
4. simulate community voting
   • currently: using voteLatestProposalAndWait CLI testing utility, until perhaps the Gov Proposal Hub adds the feature
5. start dapp ui with yarn; yarn dev. Note simple dapp UI is easy to build:
   • scaffold: yarn create vite simple-game --template react-ts
   • add query support with @agoric/rpc and chain watchers - ~100LOC
   • add offer support similarly - ~100LOC

p.s. #8489 has office hours notes, recording.

[dckc]

I got this more integrated with the simple game dapp.

For a recording, see:
agoric-labs/dapp-join-game#2 (comment)

[dckc]

Several of us got a bunch more experience with this approach this week. My latest notes are in https://github.com/agoric-labs/gimix/blob/main/README-local-chain.md

I should probably integrate that into dapp-game-pieces.

[dckc]

Getting Started now uses this approach, though the details have changed a bit.
Note the relevant docker-compose.yml is in Agoric/dapp-offer-up.