cargo near new command to initialize a new smart contract project

[frol]

It would be great to have a new command to initialize an empty project.

There is cargo-generate and near-create-app that are currently suggested in the docs, but I would prefer avoiding having extra dependency (cargo-generate) or a whole different stack (near-create-app requires Node.js) and rather build the whole DevX around cargo near ... commands.

I believe near-create-app does too much (initializes the frontend and the contract inside a single project), and cargo-generate makes things harder to use than necessary, and currently developers face the whole page of just "Create a new project" where I would love to see:

cargo near new my-new-project
cd my-new-project

and the next commands:

cargo near build
...
cargo near deploy

P.S. It might also be useful to initialize common projects like basic FT, NFT contracts (see https://github.com/near/near-sdk-rs/tree/master/examples).

[ShivangRawat30]

Hey I am currently learning rust, as it is a good first issue can you please assign this to me

[frol]

@ShivangRawat30 Sure, go ahead!

[frol]

In addition to the regular Rust project setup, I suggest also including GitHub Actions setup for fmt/linting checks on PRs, and build and deploy to testnet and (optional) mainnet on merges to main branch.

A very basic one can be found here: https://github.com/frol/transfer-near-contract/blob/main/.github/workflows/rust.yml (there is no deployment part there)

[frol]

And also setup tests environment (workspaces-rs)

[frol]

I think we could start with polishing one contract repo to a reasonable state before scripting it into cargo near new. Currently, looking at https://github.com/near-examples/, I cannot find any Rust contract example without npm/yarn in there. It makes things much more complex than necessary.

So to summarize it, a new project should have the following:

• Rust-native tooling (cargo near)
• Some minimal setup in src/lib.rs, maybe: https://github.com/near/near-sdk-rs/blob/master/examples/status-message/src/lib.rs
• End-to-end testing setup with workspaces-rs
• CI testing for PRs (formatting checks, linter, unit tests and end-to-end tests)
• CD for main branch to be deployed to testnet and mainnet (and instructions on how to setup credentials)

[iho]

@ShivangRawat30 Hi. How is your progress? Can I take this task?

[frol]

Here is a bootstrap project that cargo near new should use as a template: https://github.com/frol/cargo-near-new-project.