Developer Experience Team - Monthly Update #21 (September 2024)

September 13, 2024

Greetings Chromia Developers and Community,

Welcome to the mid-month DevEx Update! These updates inform you about the latest improvements being made to documentation and tooling to support the growth of the Chromia ecosystem.

Please note, monthly retail updates focusing on mainnet development, partnerships, ecosystem news and marketing efforts are released at the end of each month.

Developer Promotions

Chromia ProjectNet

ProjectNet was a demo dapp contest for the developer community. The application window closed on August 2nd, and the winners were announced at the end of August. The winners were: Rakein (1st place), Chronnect (2nd place), and Chromify (3rd place). Rewards have been distributed, and the contest is now over. Thanks to all those who participated.

Documentation and Educational Materials

Chromia Cookbook - NEW Developer Resource!

We’ve introduced a new developer resource called Chromia Cookbook, which offers clear and practical information on the usage of Chromia libraries, dapp deployment, and interaction with the blockchain. It includes code examples, core concepts, and step-by-step instructions. Each topic in the Cookbook stands alone, allowing you to start learning from the beginning, end, or any point in between.

Chromia Official Documentation

Added List your dapp on the Chromia Mainnet Vault topic in the section, ‘Deploy to Mainnet’:

This topic provides step-by-step instructions for listing your decentralized application (dapp) on the Chromia Mainnet Vault. It makes your dapp discoverable to users and streamlines the onboarding process.

Improved the Chromia CLI installation topic:

The update provides detailed information about installing and updating Chromia CLI in different operating systems.

Chromia Learn

Improved the Create a simple app on Chromia using Rell and React course:

The course was updated to use the latest version of the FT4 library.

Tooling and Feature Updates

VS Code Extension

Linter or formatter issues found in external libraries will no longer be reported. For every library defined in the chromia.yml, these issues will be ignored. Compiler issues are still reported on external libraries.
The target language version specified in the chromia.yml file under the compile flag will now be used as the Rell version for compilation, utilizing the language features available for that specific version. The project will be re-compiled whenever the version is changed.

Chromia CLI

Java Version Upgrade (IMPORTANT!): Java has been upgraded to version 21. Starting from this version of the CLI, Java 21 will be required. If you're still using Java 17, you will need to upgrade to 21.
Note: If you don’t want to change the default Java version on your machine to 21, you can set the environment variable “RELL_JAVA” in your shell profile to target the path of a Java21 executable. This environment variable will be used to launch Chromia CLI if it is set. If it is not set, JAVA_HOME will be used.
New Command - Adding Dapp Providers: We've added the command ‘chr deployment voterset add-dapp-provider’. This command allows users with the Dapp Provider role to add others to the role within the network, streamlining role management and collaboration.
New Command - Enhanced Voterset Management: The new `chr deployment voterset` command enhances your ability to interact with votersets linked to your public key. You can now easily manage your own votersets and access information about other votersets on the network.
New Command - Improved Proposal Handling: With the `chr deployment proposal` command, you can now retrieve information, revoke, and act on proposals within the votersets your public key is a part of. Additionally, you can view details about other proposals across the network.
Streamlined Linting and Formatting: The `chr code lint` and `chr code format` commands now automatically ignore external libraries defined in the chromia.yml file. If you wish to run these commands on an external library, use the --source-dir option and specify the path to your library.
Updated Rell Compile Version: The default Rell compile version has been updated to 0.13.14 to align with the version currently running on the mainnet. If you need a different compile target, you can specify it in the chromia.yml file under compile:rellVersion.
Refined Documentation Generation: The ‘chr generate docs-site’ command now excludes external libraries from navigation pages by default. To include a specific library in the navigation, use the ‘--include=lib.<name of lib>’ option.
Custom GTX Modules Now Supported: You can now deploy custom GTX modules in your blockchain configuration, allowing for greater flexibility and customization.

Summary of this Update

The ProjectNet contest is now over.
We have created a new developer resource, Chromia Cookbook.
We have added documentation on how to list your dapp in Chromia Vault.
Chromia CLI now uses Java 21.
We have made numerous updates to Chromia CLI, including the addition of three new commands.

Until Next Month,

Chromia DevEx Team

About Chromia

Chromia is a Layer-1 relational blockchain platform that uses a modular framework to empower users and developers with dedicated dapp chains, customizable fee structures, and enhanced digital assets. By fundamentally changing how information is structured on the blockchain, Chromia provides natively queryable data indexed in real-time, challenging the status quo to deliver innovations that will streamline the end-user experience and facilitate new Web3 business models.