I often find myself making the same edits to the dfx new -type rust starter template. This alternative starter template contains the following:
- Different directory structure without a frontend
- Automatic Candid file generation if you run cargo test
- A global State object using the thread_local pattern which is saved in stable memory across updates
- An example of a
updateandquerycall - Updated release profile based on this great blog post about Effective Rust canisters
- A devcontainer configuration so you can install the entire needed toolchain with a single click in vscode based on this tutorial (needs docker)
⚠️ Sadly the devcontainer does not work on ARM macs. Please open an issue if you experience issues on other platforms as I couldn't test those
- clone the repo and open in vscode
- If you don't have an M1/M2 mac click the tooltip that shows up to start the devcontainer
- in the devcontainer terminal run `dfx start --background"
- run
dfx deploy
If you do have an M1 of M2 mac
- clone the repo and open in vscode and do not click the popup
- remove the .devcontainer directory
- make sure you have rust toolchain installed
- run `dfx start --background"
- run
dfx deploy
To give the project your desired project name just run a find and replace on all instances of starter to your_project_name and change the name of the starter directory and the starter.did file to your_project_name and your_project_name.did as well.
Final tip: You can add additional fields to your structs accross upgrades if you wrap the new field values with the Option type. Otherwise you will get an error in the post_upgrade hook and the upgrade will fail.
Feel free to open up an issue if you'd like an example of different concepts as well.