MacOS setup for Plutus Pioneer Program

This is a step by step guide for getting the playground client and server running in the plutus-apps repository. It should work on Catalina and Big Sur. (Was tested on 2 Macs with Big Sur). However, if you run on an M1 Mac, you will need to add additional Nix configuration for your build to succeed. See this guide.

Credits

Cloned from Reddit

Go give u/RikAlexander karma!

Setup

1 - Install Nix

[$] sh <(curl -L https://nixos.org/nix/install) --darwin-use-unencrypted-nix-store-volume

2 - Close terminal & reopen (to make sure that all environment variables are set)

3 - Check Nix installation / version with

[$] nix --version

4 - Edit the /etc/nix/nix.conf file

[$] nano /etc/nix/nix.conf

5 - Add these lines to the file:

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=

Note: These lines are there to avoid very long build times

Note 2: if the file /etc/nix/nix.conf doesn't exist: create it. ([$] mkdir /etc/nix for the directory and [$] touch /etc/nix/nix.conf for the file)

6 - Restart your computer

7 - Now to install, clone the git repo first

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

8 - All the following builds should be executed while in the plutus directory

[$] cd plutus-apps

9 - Build the Plutus Playground Client / Server

[$] nix-build -A plutus-playground.client
[$] nix-build -A plutus-playground.server

10 - Build other plutus dependencies

[$] nix-build -A plutus-playground.generate-purescript
[$] nix-build -A plutus-playground.start-backend
[$] nix-build -A plutus-pab

11 - Go into nix-shell

[$] nix-shell

12 - inside of the nix-shell

[$] cd plutus-pab
[$] plutus-pab-generate-purs
[$] cd ../plutus-playground-server
[$] plutus-playground-generate-purs

13 - start the playground server

[$] plutus-playground-server

Great! All set.

14 - Now in a new terminal window:

[$] cd plutus-apps
[$] nix-shell
[$] cd plutus-playground-client

15 - Here we compile / build the frontend of the playground

[$] npm run start

We're done!

The playground should be up and running.

Open your finest browser and navigate to:

https://localhost:8009/

Cloned from Reddit

Go give u/RikAlexander karma!

Note:

On MacOS BigSur some users have reported that the building failed with an error like:

error: while setting up the build environment: getting attributes of path '/usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib': No such file or directory

There are two solutions that are reported to solve this problem: - Change the nix build to an unstable (read: newer) build of nixpkgs.

[$] sudo nix-channel --add https://nixos.org/channels/nixpkgs-unstable unstable

• Disabling thesandbox and extra-sandbox-paths properties in the /etc/nix/nix.conf and ~/.config/nix/nix.conf files.

Note 2:

If anyone gets stuck because of this error:

"error: refusing to create Nix store volume ... boot volume is FileVault encrypted"

You should check out these links (Thank you u/call_me_coldass): https://github.com/digitallyinduced/ihp/issues/93#issuecomment-766332648 https://www.philipp.haussleiter.de/2020/04/fixing-nix-setup-on-macos-catalina/

Troubleshooting

nix-shell exits with segmentation fault

Error message:

[$] nix-shell
[1]    296 segmentation fault  nix-shell

Solutions: - Comment out the line withHoogle = false; in shell.nix before running nix-shell

#withHoogle = false;

haskell-language-server fails with segmentation fault / You can't get any Haskell editor-integration working

• Problem: running [$] haskell-language-server in one of the plutus-pioneer-program repos fails with a segmentation fault

  [$] cd plutus-pioneer-program/code/week01
  [$] haskell-language-server
  haskell-language-server version: 0.9.0.0 ...
  ...
  [INFO] Using interface files cache dir: ghcide
  [INFO] Making new HscEnv[plutus-pioneer-program-week01-0.1.0.0-inplace]
  Segmentation fault: 11
  

Solution: - Upgrade the plutus-apps repo to a later release (maybe master branch). Since haskell-language-server has version 0.9.0.0 (as you can see in the first line after execution) and this version is not ready for macOS Big Sur. Note This error probably occurs due to the linker changes introduced in macOS Big Sur, see

npm run start for the plutus-playground-client fails with modules not found

Problem: Server exits prematurely with compilation errors. Complaining about modules it could not find.

Solution: - Trigger rebuild of client: [$] cd plutus-playground-client [$] npm clean-install

- Try to start client: `[$] npm run start`
- If this is insufficient, try cleaning up the git repo and redo the previous steps
[$] git clean -xfd