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Canton Network quickstart installation

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Introduction

The Quickstart application helps you and your team become familiar with CN application development by providing essential scaffolding. The Quickstart application provides a launchpad and is intended to be extended to meet your business needs. When you are familiar with the Quickstart, review the technology choices and application design to determine what changes are needed. Technology and design decisions are ultimately up to you.

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Overview

This guide walks through the installation and LocalNet deployment of the CN Quickstart. We have provided a fast path installation and step-by-step instructions, based on level of experience, for your convenience. Please contact your representative at Canton Network if you find errors.

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Roadmap

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Prerequisites

Access to the CN-Quickstart GitHub repository is public. The CN Quickstart is a Dockerized application and requires Docker Desktop. We recommend allocating 8 GB of memory to Docker Desktop. Allocate additional resources if you witness unhealthy containers, if possible. Decline Observability if your machine does not have sufficient memory. Other requirements include:

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Nix download support

Check for Nix on your machine:
If the command returns something like Nix (Nix) 2.25.2, you’re done. Recommended installation for MacOS:
Recommended installation for Linux (Windows users should run this and all following commands in WSL 2):

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Fast path installation

If you are familiar with the prerequisites, use these abbreviated installation instructions. More detailed instructions are provided in the step-by-step instructions below. Clone the repository, provision the toolchain, and build the application. These steps run in order, in a single terminal:
The remaining steps run in separate terminals at the same time, so they can’t be combined into one block:
When you’re done (see Closing the application below):
If applicable, close Canton Console with exit and close Daml Shell with quit.

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Step-by-step instructions

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Clone from GitHub

Clone and cd into the cn-quickstart repository into your local machine.
allow direnv

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Docker

Verify that the Docker Desktop application is running on your computer. Login to Docker repositories via the terminal.
The last command requires a Docker Hub username and password or Personal Access Token (PAT). Commands should return ‘Login Succeeded’.

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Change to the quickstart directory

The development toolchain, including the Daml tooling, JDK, and Node.js, is provisioned automatically by Nix when you run direnv allow in the repository root. cd into the quickstart subdirectory.
The Makefile providing project choreography is in the quickstart/ directory. make only operates within quickstart/.If you see errors related to make, double check your present working directory.

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Deploy a validator on LocalNet

Configure the local development environment by running make setup. Disable Observability. Enable OAuth2. Leave the party hint blank to use the default and disable TEST MODE.
The party hint is used as a party node’s alias of their identification hash. The Party Hint is not part of the user’s identity. It is a convenience feature. It is possible to have multiple party nodes with the same hint.
You can change these choices any time by running make setup again.
OAuth2 and Observability may be unstable if your machine has less than 8 GB of memory to allocate to Docker Desktop.
Build the application.
Build success In a new terminal window, initiate log collection from the quickstart subdirectory.
Once complete, return to the previous terminal to start the application and Canton services.

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Connecting to the Local Canton Nodes

In a separate shell, from the quickstart subdirectory, run the Canton Console.
Canton console In a fourth shell, from the quickstart subdirectory, begin the Daml Shell.
Daml shell

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Closing the application

⚠️ (If you plan on immediately using the CN Quickstart then delay execution of this section)

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Close Canton console

When complete, open the Canton console terminal. Run exit to stop and remove the console container.

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Close Daml shell

In the Daml shell terminal, execute quit to stop the shell container.

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Close the CN Quickstart

Finally, close the application and observability services with:
It is wise to run make clean-all during development and at the end of each session to avoid conflict errors on subsequent application builds.

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Next steps

You have successfully installed the CN Quickstart. The next section, “Exploring The Demo,” provides a demonstration of the example application.

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Connecting your application to The Canton Network

The LocalNet deployment connects to a local validator which is in turn connected to a local super-validator (synchronizer). Staging and final production deployments require connecting to a validator that is in turn connected to the public Canton Network. The Canton Network provides three synchronizer pools. The production network is MainNet; the production staging network is TestNet. As a developer you will mostly be connecting to the development staging network DevNet. Access to a SV Node that is whitelisted on the CN is required to connect to DevNet. The CF publishes a list of SV nodes who have the ability to sponsor a Validator node. To access DevNet, contact your sponsoring SV agent for VPN connection information.

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Resources