Installing the IC SDK
Overview
The IC SDK is a software development kit used for creating and managing canister smart contracts on the ICP blockchain. The IC SDK supports Motoko and Rust programming languages by default, but developers can use other languages as well.
Components of the IC SDK
The IC SDK installation script installs several components in default locations on your local computer. The following table describes the development environment components that the installation script installs:
Component | Description | Default location |
---|---|---|
dfx | Command-line interface (CLI) | /usr/local/bin/dfx |
moc | Motoko runtime compiler | ~/.cache/dfinity/versions/<VERSION>/moc |
replica | Internet Computer local network binary | ~/.cache/dfinity/versions/<VERSION>/replica |
uninstall.sh | Script to remove the SDK and all of its components | ~/.cache/dfinity/uninstall.sh |
versions | Cache directory that contains a subdirectory for each version of the SDK you install. | ~/.cache/dfinity/versions |
IC SDK vs CDK vs dfx
There are a few components worth expanding on:
IC SDK: this is the SDK created by DFINITY for creating and managing canisters. This is just one SDK in the ICP community and a common entry point for developers.
Canister Development Kit (CDK): a CDK is an adapter used by the IC SDK that provides a programming language with the features necessary to create and manage canisters. The IC SDK comes with a few CDKs already installed for you so you can use them in the language of your choice. For example, the IC SDK comes with the Rust CDK already installed. CDKs that are not installed but available for developers include the:
Since CDKs are components used by the SDK, some developers choose to use the CDK directly (without the IC SDK), but typically are used as part of the whole IC SDK.
- dfx:
dfx
is the command-line interface for the IC SDK. This is why many commands for the IC SDK start with the command "dfx ..
" such asdfx new
ordfx stop
.
Installing the IC SDK
You can download and install the latest version of the IC SDK for creating and managing canister smart contracts by running the command below. The following topics provide additional information about installing, upgrading, and removing the IC SDK.
The IC SDK is natively supported on Linux or macOS 12.* Monterey or later.
There is no native support for dfx
on Windows. However, by installing the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL 2), you can run dfx on a Windows system as described below.
Not all features of dfx may be supported on WSL 2.
- Install on Mac/Linux
- Install on Windows
sh -ci "$(curl -fsSL https://internetcomputer.org/install.sh)"
If you are using a machine running Apple silicon, you will need to have
Rosetta installed. You can install Rosetta by running
softwareupdate --install-rosetta
in your terminal.
There is no native support for dfx
on Windows. However, by installing the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), you can run dfx
also on a Windows system as described below.
Installing WSL 2
Follow Microsoft's instructions for installing the Windows Subsystem for Linux. Make sure you are running Windows 10 (version 2004 or higher) or Windows 11.
Supported WSL Versions
Theoretically, WSL 1 and WSL 2 should both allow you to run dfx
. However, it is recommended to use WSL 2. WSL Comparison explains the differences between WSL1 and WSL 2.
Check your WSL version
Run the command wsl –list –verbose (wsl -l -v)
to check the Linux distributions installed on your Windows machine. Below is an example output:
NAME STATE VERSION
* Ubuntu Running 2
To learn more about the wsl
command, check the command reference for WSL.
Upgrade from WSL 1
If you have WSL 1 installed, follow the upgrade instructions to upgrade to WSL 2. Basically you need to:
- Step 1: Install the WSL 2 Linux kernel update package.
- Step 2: Run the following command to set your Linux distributions to version 2:
wsl--set-version <distribution name> 2
Running Linux
After you have WSL installed, you can launch the Linux distributions by name.
For example, run the command:Ubuntu.exe
to start the Ubuntu
distribution from the command line.
Installing dfx
Once you have WSL installed, you can install dfx
by running:
sh -ci "$(curl -fsSL https://internetcomputer.org/install.sh)"
Troubleshooting
Node.js is not properly installed
WSL 2 has node.js 10.x.x
installed by default. But the latest dfx
requires node.js 16.0.0
or higher.
Permission denied when running dfx start
Projects created from dfx
need to be on the Linux filesystem instead of the Windows filesystem. Usually cd ~
or cd $HOME
in the WSL terminal will bring you to the home directory, and creating projects in there should work.
No internet access on WSL
If you don’t have internet access on WSL, for instance you cannot ping any server successfully, most likely the nameserver on WSL is set to an internal WSL proxy. You can check the /etc/resolv.conf
file to see if it’s the case. If it’s true, please follow the below steps to set to a valid nameserver:
- Step 1: Create the
/etc/wsl.conf
file and add the below content to it, this will prevent WSL from regenerating the/etc/resolv.conf
file after restarting.
[network]
generateResolvConf = false
- Step 2: Modify the nameserver in the
/etc/resolv.conf
file to a valid one, for example the Google nameserver8.8.8.8
. - Step 3: On Windows, restart WSL to let this fix take effect.
wsl.exe --shutdown
Core components in a versioned directory
The ~/.cache/dfinity/versions
directory stores one or more versioned subdirectories of the SDK. Each versioned subdirectory contains the all of the directories and files required for a specific version of the SDK. For example, if you list the contents of the ~/.cache/dfinity/versions/0.9.3
directory you would see the following core components:
total 349192
drwxr-xr-x 17 pubs staff 544 Mar 15 11:55 .
drwxr-xr-x 4 pubs staff 128 Mar 25 14:36 ..
drwxr-xr-x 49 pubs staff 1568 Mar 15 11:55 base
drwxr-xr-x 20 pubs staff 640 Mar 15 11:55 bootstrap
-r-x------ 1 pubs staff 66253292 Mar 15 11:55 dfx
-r-x------ 1 pubs staff 10496256 Dec 31 1969 ic-ref
-r-x------ 1 pubs staff 5663644 Dec 31 1969 ic-starter
-r-x------ 1 pubs staff 9604 Dec 31 1969 libcharset.1.0.0.dylib
-r-x------ 1 pubs staff 38220 Dec 31 1969 libffi.7.dylib
-r-x------ 1 pubs staff 668300 Dec 31 1969 libgmp.10.dylib
-r-x------ 1 pubs staff 958248 Dec 31 1969 libiconv.2.4.0.dylib
-r-x------ 1 pubs staff 4200 Dec 31 1969 libiconv.dylib
-r-x------ 1 pubs staff 96900 Dec 31 1969 libz.1.2.11.dylib
-r-x------ 1 pubs staff 15417684 Dec 31 1969 mo-doc
-r-x------ 1 pubs staff 14634020 Dec 31 1969 mo-ide
-r-x------ 1 pubs staff 15111508 Dec 31 1969 moc
-r-x------ 1 pubs staff 49404128 Dec 31 1969 replica
Motoko base directory
The base
directory in the versioned subdirectory of the SDK contains the Motoko base library modules that are compatible with that version of the SDK. Because the Motoko base library is evolving rapidly, you should only use the base modules that are packaged with the version of the SDK that you have installed.
Bootstrap directory
The bootstrap
directory contains web server code that is deprecated. Beginning with version 0.7.0, agents can call an HTTP middleware server instead of the bootstrap
code. This change enables canisters to respond to HTTP requests directly and operate more like traditional web-based applications.
Upgrading to the latest version
If a new version of the IC SDK is available for download after your initial installation, you should install the updated version at your earliest convenience to get the latest fixes and enhancements as soon as possible.
You can use the dfx upgrade
command to compare the version you have currently installed against the latest version available for download. If a newer version of dfx
is available, the dfx upgrade
command automatically downloads and installs the latest version.
You don't need to uninstall the software before installing the new version. However, if you want to perform a clean installation rather than an upgrade, you can first uninstall the software as described in removing the software, then re-run the download and installation command.
For information about the features and fixes in the latest release, see the release notes.
Installing a specific version
The install script looks for the environment variable DFX_VERSION
to check if it is supposed to install a specific version of the IC SDK or to simply install the latest version.
If you want to install e.g. version 0.11.1
specifically, you can run the command:
DFX_VERSION=0.11.1 sh -ci "$(curl -sSL https://internetcomputer.org/install.sh)"
Setting a default version
If defined, the IC SDK will always run the version specified in the project's dfx.json
in the key "dfx"
.
For example, if your dfx.json
contains "dfx": "0.11.1"
, any dfx
command you run within this project's directory will be executed by dfx
of version 0.11.1
.
Should the defined version not be installed (e.g. because you cloned a repo that was created for a different version than you have installed locally), dfx
will report an error.
To set a global default (that gets overwritten by project-specific settings from the project's dfx.json
), run the install script with the desired version, even if it is already installed.
Building from source
If you would like to compile dfx by yourself, head over to the IC SDK repo. The README contains the instructions how you can build it on your own.
Uninstalling the IC SDK
When you install the IC SDK, the installation script puts the required binary files in a local directory and creates a cache. You can remove the IC SDK binaries and cache from your local computer by running the uninstall
script located in the .cache
folder.
For example:
~/.cache/dfinity/uninstall.sh
If you are uninstalling because you want to immediately reinstall a clean version of dfx
, you can run the following command:
~/.cache/dfinity/uninstall.sh && sh -ci "$(curl -sSL https://internetcomputer.org/install.sh)"