Avash — The Avalanche Shell Client

This is a temporary stateful shell execution environment used to deploy networks locally, manage their processes, and run network tests.

Avash opens a shell environment of its own. This environment is completely wiped when Avash exits. Any Avalanche nodes deployed by Avash should be exited as well, leaving only their stash (containing only their log files) behind.

Avash provides the ability to run Lua scripts which can execute a sequence of shell commands in Avash. This allows for automation of regular tasks. For instance, different network configurations can be programmed into a lua script and deployed as-needed, allowing for rapid tests against various network types.

Installation

Requirements

• Golang 1.13+
• An Avalanche Client Implementing Avalanche Standard CLI Flags

Quick Setup

1. Install and build an Avalanche client
2. go get github.com/ava-labs/avash
3. cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/ava-labs/avash
4. go build

For full documentation of Avash configuration and commands, please see the official Avalanche Documentation.

Using Avash

Opening a shell

Super easy, just type ./avash and it will open a shell environement.

For your first command, type help in Avash to see the commands available.

You can also type help [command] to see the list of options available for that command.

Ex:

help procmanager
help procmanager start

Commands

• avaxwallet - Tools for interacting with Avalanche Payments over the network.
• callrpc - Issues an RPC call to a node.
• exit - Exit the shell.
• help - Help about any command.
• network - Tools for interacting with remote hosts.
• procmanager - Access the process manager for the avash client.
• runscript - Runs the provided script.
• setoutput - Sets shell log output.
• startnode - Starts a node process and gives it a name.
• varstore - Tools for creating variable stores and printing variables within them.

Writing Scripts

Avash imports the gopher-lua library (https://github.com/yuin/gopher-lua) to run lua scripts.

Scripts have certain hooks available to them which allows the user to write code which invokes the current Avash environment.

The functions available to Lua are:

• avash_call - Takes a string and runs it as an Avash command, returning output
• avash_sleepmicro - Takes an unsigned integer representing microseconds and sleeps for that long
• avash_setvar - Takes a variable scope (string), a variable name (string), and a variable (string) and places it in the variable store. The scope must already have been created.

When writing Lua, the standard Lua functionality is available to automate the execution of series of Avash commands. This allows a developer to automate:

• Local network deployments
• Sending transations, both virtuous and conflicting
• Order transaction test cases
• Save the value of UTXO sets and test results to disk
• Compare the values of two nodes UTXO sets
• Track expected results and compare them with real nodes

Example Lua scripts are in the ./scripts folder.