Plutus Pioneers Program - Arch Linux

A setup guide for the Nix package manager and Cardano Plutus apps on Arch Linux for the Plutus Pioneers Program

Notes

• remember to git checkout the correct commit based on the PPP week before building
• due to SIGSEGV when building the server and client the GC_DONT_GC=1 environment variable is used to turn off the garbage collection in Mono
• user and root privileges will be denoted via the prefixes $ and # respectively
• to clear /nix/store/ from all packages not in use by any user profile or by a currently running program run nix-collect-garbage

Setup

Nix

For Nix setup the Nix ArchWiki was used, as well as the official Nix Arch package instead of the upstream script due to security reasons as noted in the wiki.

Install the Nix package:

# pacman -S nix

Enable and start the nix-daemon.service:

# systemctl enable --now nix-daemon.service

Add your PPP $ $USER to the nix-users group:

# groupadd nix-users
# usermod -aG nix-users your_ppp_user_name # replace with your PPP user name

Add a channel and update it:

$ nix-channel --add https://nixos.org/channels/nixpkgs-unstable
$ nix-channel --update

Reboot.

Plutus apps

Setup the IOHK binary cache based on the plutus-apps repository by editing ~/.config/nix/nix.conf with:

substituters        = https://hydra.iohk.io https://iohk.cachix.org https://cache.nixos.org/
trusted-public-keys = hydra.iohk.io:f/Ea+s+dFdN+3Y/G+FDgSq+a5NEWhJGzdjvKNGv0/EQ= iohk.cachix.org-1:DpRUyj7h7V830dp/i6Nti+NEO2/nhblbov/8MW7Rqoo= cache.nixos.org-1:6NCHdD59X431o0gWypbMrAURkbJ16ZPMQFGspcDShjY=

Set your user as a trusted Nix user by editing /etc/nix/nix.conf and add the line:

trusted-users = your_ppp_user_name # replace with your PPP user name

Clone the plutus-apps repository and change your working directory.

$ git clone https://github.com/input-output-hk/plutus-apps.git
$ cd plutus-apps

Based on the PPP week, checkout the desired commit:

$ git checkout ppp_week_n_commit_hash # replace with the desired PPP week commit hash

Build the server:

$ GC_DONT_GC=1 nix-build -A plutus-playground.server

Build the client:

$ GC_DONT_GC=1 nix-build -A plutus-playground.client

Start an interactive shell based on the plutus-apps default Nix expression:

This step could take a while.

$ nix-shell

Position into the server directory and start the server:

$ cd plutus-playground-server
$ GC_DONT_GC=1 plutus-playground-server

Wait for the server to log Interpreter ready.

Open a new terminal and position in the plutus-apps directory. Again, start the shell:

$ nix-shell

Position into the client directory and start the client:

$ cd plutus-playground-client
$ GC_DONT_GC=1 npm run start

Wait for the client to log ℹ ｢wdm｣: Compiled successfully..

Usage

Navigate to https://0.0.0.0:8009/ in your browser.