Installing Viper¶

Don’t panic if the installation fails. Viper is still under development and undergoes constant changes. Installation will be much more simplified and optimized after a stable version release.

Take a deep breath, follow the instructions, and please create an issue if you encounter any errors.

Note

The easiest way to try out the language, experiment with examples, and compile code to bytecode or LLL is to use the online compiler at https://viper.tools.

Prerequisites¶

Installing Python 3.6¶

Viper can only be built using Python 3.6 and higher. If you are already running Python 3.6, skip to the next section, else follow the instructions here to make sure you have the correct Python version installed, and are using that version.

Ubuntu¶

16.04 and older¶

Start by making sure your packages are up-to-date:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get -y upgrade

Install Python 3.6 and some necessary packages:

sudo apt-get install build-essential libssl-dev libffi-dev
wget https://www.python.org/ftp/python/3.6.2/Python-3.6.2.tgz
tar xfz Python-3.6.2.tgz
cd Python-3.6.2/
./configure --prefix /usr/local/lib/python3.6
sudo make
sudo make install

16.10 and newer¶

From Ubuntu 16.10 onwards, the Python 3.6 version is in the universe repository.

Run the following commands to install:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install python3.6

MacOS¶

Make sure you have Homebrew installed. If you don’t have the brew command available on the terminal, follow these instructions to get Homebrew on your system.

To install Python 3.6, follow the instructions here: Installing Python 3 on Mac OS X

Also, ensure the GMP arithmetic library is installed using brew:

brew install gmp

Creating a virtual environment¶

It is strongly recommended to install Viper in a virtual Python environment, so that new packages installed and dependencies built are strictly contained in your Viper project and will not alter or affect your other development environment set-up.

To create a new virtual environment for Viper run the following commands:

virtualenv -p /usr/local/lib/python3.6/bin/python3 --no-site-packages ~/viper-venv
source ~/viper-venv/bin/activate

To find out more about virtual environments, check out: virtualenv guide.

Installation¶

Again, it is strongly recommended to install Viper in a virtual Python environment. This guide assumes you are in a virtual environment containing Python 3.6.

Get the latest version of Viper by cloning the Github repository, and run the install and test commands:

git clone https://github.com/ethereum/viper.git
cd viper
make
make test

Additionally, you may try to compile an example contract by running:

viper examples/crowdfund.v.py

If everything works correctly, you are now able to compile your own smart contracts written in Viper. However, please keep in mind that Viper is still experimental and not ready for production!

Note

For MacOS users:

Apple has deprecated use of OpenSSL in favor of its own TLS and crypto libraries. This means that you will need to export some OpenSSL settings yourself, before you can install Viper.

Use the following commands:

export CFLAGS="-I$(brew --prefix openssl)/include"
export LDFLAGS="-L$(brew --prefix openssl)/lib"
pip install scrypt

Now you can run the install and test commands again:

make install
make test

Docker¶

A Dockerfile is provided in the master branch of the repository. In order to build a Docker Image please run:

docker build https://github.com/ethereum/viper.git -t viper:1
docker run -it viper:1 /bin/bash

To ensure that everything works correctly after the installtion, please run the test commands and try compiling a contract:

make test
viper examples/crowdfund.v.py