Rust is the most common programming language to write Solana programs with. This quickstart guide will demonstrate how to quickly setup, build, and deploy your first Rust based Solana program to the blockchain.
This guide uses the Solana CLI and assumes you have setup your local development environment. Checkout our local development quickstart guide here to quickly get setup.
What you will learn
- how to install the Rust language locally
- how to initialize a new Solana Rust program
- how to code a basic Solana program in Rust
- how to build and deploy your Rust program
Install Rust and Cargo
To be able to compile Rust based Solana programs, install the Rust language and Cargo (the Rust package manager) using Rustup:
Run your localhost validator
The Solana CLI comes with the test validator built in. This command line tool will allow you to run a full blockchain cluster on your machine.
Run the Solana test validator in a new/separate terminal window that will remain open. This command line program must remain running for your localhost validator to remain online and ready for action.
Configure your Solana CLI to use your localhost validator for all your future terminal commands and Solana program deployment:
Create a new Rust library with Cargo
Solana programs written in Rust are libraries which are compiled to
BPF bytecode and saved in
the .so
format.
Initialize a new Rust library named hello_world
via the Cargo command line:
Add the solana-program
crate to your new Rust library:
It is highly recommended to keep your solana-program
and other
Solana Rust dependencies in-line with your installed version of the Solana
CLI. For example, if you are running Solana CLI 2.0.3
, you can instead
run:
This will ensure your crate uses only 2.0.3
and nothing else. If you
experience compatibility issues with Solana dependencies, check out the
Solana Stack Exchange
Open your Cargo.toml
file and add these required Rust library configuration
settings, updating your project name as appropriate:
Create your first Solana program
The code for your Rust based Solana program will live in your src/lib.rs
file.
Inside src/lib.rs
you will be able to import your Rust crates and define your
logic. Open your src/lib.rs
file in your favorite editor.
At the top of lib.rs
, import the solana-program
crate and bring our needed
items into the local namespace:
Every Solana program must define an entrypoint
that tells the Solana runtime
where to start executing your onchain code. Your program's
entrypoint should provide a
public function named process_instruction
:
Every onchain program should return the Ok
result enum with a value of ()
. This
tells the Solana runtime that your program executed successfully without errors.
This program above will simply
log a message of "Hello, world!" to the
blockchain cluster, then gracefully exit with Ok(())
.
Build your Rust program
Inside a terminal window, you can build your Solana Rust program by running in
the root of your project (i.e. the directory with your Cargo.toml
file):
After each time you build your Solana program, the above command will output the build path of your compiled program's
.so
file and the default keyfile that will be used for the program's address.cargo build-sbf
installs the toolchain from the currently installed solana CLI tools. You may need to upgrade those tools if you encounter any version incompatibilities. In case you get an error like:error while loading shared libraries: librustc_driver-278a6e01e221f788.so
you may need to go to~/.cache/solana/
andrm -rf
the platform tools there and then runcargo build-sbf
again.
Deploy your Solana program
Using the Solana CLI, you can deploy your program to your currently selected cluster:
Once your Solana program has been deployed (and the transaction finalized), the above command will output your program's public address (aka its "program id").
Congratulations!
You have successfully setup, built, and deployed a Solana program using the Rust language.
You can use the Solana Explorer to look at your newly deployed program. The explorer also works on localnet, you can open the Solana Explorer on localnet and just paste your programId in the search bar.
Let's call the Hello World program
Now that the program is deployed we want to call it to see the actual "Hello
World" on chain. For that we will use Javascript and the Solana web3.js
library.
Install Node.js
To use node in WSL2 on Windows, please follow this
guide to installing node in WSL2 to
install node.
reopen the terminal
For macOS you can install node.js via package manager
Create the client file
Install the Solana web3.js library and the Solana helpers library:
Create a new file called client.mjs
and add the following code:
Don't forget to replace
YOUR_PROGRAM_ID
with the program ID you got from the deployment step.
Run the client
Now lets use node
run this file to see the "Hello World" on chain.
You should see the following output:
If you follow the link you should be able to see your 'Hello World' transaction on the Solana explorer.
Deploy to Solana devnet
Now you have successfully deployed your program to your local cluster. If you want to deploy it to the public devnet to show your program to your friends you can do so by running the following command:
Then change the connections url in your client.mjs
also to
https://api.devnet.solana.com
and run the client again.
You should see the same output as before but now on the public devnet cluster. You can see the transaction in the Solana Explorer again. Now you just need to switch it to devnet on the top right.
Congratulations, now everyone in the world can see your "Hello World" transaction on the Solana blockchain.
Next steps
See the links below to learn more about writing Rust based Solana programs: