Building Tools to Supercharge Chromia’s Ecosystem
Welcome to the March installment of our mid-month DevEx Team Update!
To attract and retain developers, it is important to provide professional grade tools and documentation.
These updates track the progress of our dedicated team who work to improve the experience that developers have when they build on Chromia.
Please note, “retail updates” focusing on development milestones, network/ecosystem expansion and marketing efforts are released at the end of each month.
Important News
Chromia’s Testnet Mark 2 was publicly launched on February 7th 2023, and it is now possible to deploy a dapp. Functionality is limited, but will be expanded in the coming months.
Chromia now has an official Discord server, Chromia Lounge. We are actively directing all developer interaction to our Discord. Join today!
Documentation Updates
- A new documentation section called ‘Chromia Overview’ has been added, with the goal of giving a summarized ‘birds-eye view’ of how Chromia works. We are building this section to allow both developers and end users to understand the overall design of the system, without having to sift through a 30+ page whitepaper. This section will be expanded and updated over time.
- The ‘Chroma Chat’ code example has been updated to be compatible with the latest versions of Rell and Postchain. This code example outlines a decentralized multi-channel chat app that stores all of its data on-chain.
- Added documentation for the Postchain Management Client, or PMC. PMC is a command line tool used by Network Providers that submits transactions to the Directory Chain. This documentation contains information about all the commands and settings that are available in PMC, and is part of a larger initiative to create a comprehensive section dedicated to Network Providers.
Tooling and Feature Updates
- Developers who use Linux are now able to install the Chromia CLI via the apt-get package manager.
- CLI Codegen support for TypeScript is now complete. Support for ‘vanilla’ Javascript will be completed in the near future. This tool allows developers who have written a dapp backend in Rell to automatically generate query and operation stubs for use in frontend code.
What We are Currently Working On
- Last month’s update mentioned the addition of a ‘go to definition’ function for the VS Code Rell plugin. This is still on our to do list and we plan to add it soon.
- Creating documentation on how to set up a private network across multiple nodes for staging, testing, and development. A private setup is useful for developers who want more control over their application data (i.e. during major Testnet upgrades, redeployment may result in data loss)
- Continued work on the Network Provider documentation section
- Enabling CLI Codegen Tool support for vanilla Javascript
Until Next Month,
The Chromia Developer Experience Team
About Chromia
Modern society runs on data, and every online service you’re using is built upon underlying databases - ranging from your online bank to music streaming and gaming. Chromia is a relational blockchain - a combination of a relational database and a blockchain - making it easy to develop user-friendly decentralized apps for almost any industry, including DeFi, NFTs, gaming, and more.
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