Building from source

This guide will outline how to setup your environment to build the Polka Storage parachain, we cover how to build the binaries directly on your system or using Nix to ease the process.

• Get the code
• System dependencies
• Using Nix
  • Pre-requisites
• Building

Get the code

To get started, first clone the repository and enter the repository's directory:

git clone git@github.com:eigerco/polka-storage.git
cd polka-storage

System dependencies

To build the binaries directly on your system you will need the following tools:

• Rust 1.81.0 — you can install it using rustup and its guide for help.
• Other dependencies — keep reading, we'll get to it after the end of this list!
• just (optional) — (after installing Rust) you can use cargo install just or check the official list of packages.

The dependencies mentioned are for Linux distros using the apt family of package managers. Different systems may use different package managers, as such, they may require you to find the equivalent package.

To install the required dependencies run the following commands:

$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install -y libhwloc-dev \
    opencl-headers \
    ocl-icd-opencl-dev \
    protobuf-compiler \
    clang \
    build-essential \
    git \
    curl

Using Nix

You can use Nix to simplify the building process, if you're just taking the network for test-drive this is a great method to get started.

Nix will take care of setting up all the dependencies for you! If you're curious, you can read more about using Nix in fasterthanlime's blog, the official Nix guide or Determinate Systems' Zero to Nix guide.

Pre-requisites

• nix — which you can install by following the official guide or using the Determinate Systems installer — the latter being usually more reliable on MacOS systems.
• direnv (optional) — which you can install by following the official guide

If you're using direnv, when going into the cloned directory for the first time nix will activate automatically and install the required packages, this make take some time.

If you're not using direnv, you will need to run nix develop to achieve the same effect — for more information refer to the official Nix guide — https://nix.dev/manual/nix/2.17/command-ref/new-cli/nix3-develop.

Building

After all this setup, it is time to start building the binaries, which you can do manually using the following command:

cargo build --release -p <BINARY-NAME>

Where <BINARY-NAME> is one of:

• polka-storage-node
• polka-storage-provider-client
• polka-storage-provider-server
• storagext-cli
• mater-cli

For more information on what each binary does, refer to Building.

Just recipes

To simplify the building process, we've written some Just recipes.

Running

After building the desired binaries, you can find them under the target/release folder (or target/debug if you didn't use the -r/--release flag).

Assuming you're in the project root, you can run them with the following command:

$ target/release/<BINARY-NAME>

Where <BINARY-NAME> is one of:

• polka-storage-node
• polka-storage-provider-server
• polka-storage-provider-client
• mater-cli
• storagext-cli

Additionally, you can move them to a folder under your $PATH and run them as you would with any other binary.