Releases · use-ink/cargo-contract

This is our first alpha release for cargo-contract v6. We release it together
with ink! v6.0.0-alpha.

The biggest change is that we are in the process of migrating from pallet-contracts +
WebAssembly (executed in wasmi) to pallet-revive +
RISC-V (executed in PolkaVM).
This is a major breaking change, cargo-contract will only be compatible with ink! >= v6
and chains that include pallet-revive.
We did a detailed write-up of the background to this development and the reasoning
here.

Compatibility of this release:

In the following we'll describe some breaking changes on a high-level. The
context to understand them is that the pallet-revive team has Ethereum/Solidity
support as the number one priority. All their design decisions derive from that,
they don't want to maintain code that is unnecessary for that objective.

Updated structs + function arguments

We had to change a number of structs and function arguments. Some notable ones:

SourceWasm -> SourceContractBytecode
dest_wasm -> dest_polkavm
optimization_result -> linker_size_result

And v5 ExecuteArgs →
v6.0.0-alpha ExecuteArgs.

We won't describe the other ones here. The best course is to see if you encounter
compilation errors upon upgrading to 6.0.0-alpha. If so, please check our Rust
docs or the cargo-contract source code for how the new format looks and what
the comments say.

The commit that applied the majority of naming changes was
this one.

Types

Contract Balance: `U256`

For the type of a contract's balance, pallet-revive uses depending on the context

either the configured pallet_revive::Config::Currency type (which corresponds
to the ink::Environment::Balance type.
or a hardcoded U256 (which corresponds to what Ethereum uses).
In this alpha release we just adhere to requiring the types that pallet-revive uses.
In an upcoming beta release this could be simplified to reduce UX friction by just
using one type everywhere and converting to the pallet-revive one.

Contract Address: `H160`

For a contract's account, pallet-revive is using either the configured AccountId type
of the polkadot-sdk runtime, or H160.

Finding the H160 for an AccountId is done via an address derivation scheme derived in
#7662.
After instantiating a contract, the address is no longer returned by pallet-revive.
Instead one has to derive it from given parameters (see the linked PR). cargo-contract
does that automatically.

For contract instantiations and contract calls the pallet requires that a 1-to-1 mapping
of an AccountId to a H160 has been created. This can be done via the map_account/
unmap_account API.
The PR #6096 contains more
information.

Besides the publicly exposed crate functions, we've introduced a new subcommand
cargo contract account that allows resolving the H160 contract address to the
Substrate AccountId which it is mapped to.

Contract Hash: `H256`

For a contract's hash value, pallet-revive uses a fixed H256, Previously,
the ink::Environment::Hash type referenced the hash type being used for the
contract's hash. Now it's just a fixed H160.

Events

In #7164, Parity removed
most smart-contract-specific events: Called, ContractCodeUpdated, CodeStored,
CodeRemoved, Terminated, Instantiated, DelegateCalled,
StorageDepositTransferredAndHeld, StorageDepositTransferredAndReleased.

The ContractEmitted event (for events a contract emits) is still available.

Debugging

Previously, pallet-contracts returned a debug_message field with contract
instantiations and dry-runs.
Whenever ink::env::debug_println was invoked in a contract, ink! wrote debugging
info to this field. This functionality has been removed. Instead pallet-revive now
supports other means of debugging.

The most relevant for this release is the tracing API. There are a number of PRs
that implemented it, so we won't link a specific one here. A good starting point
to look deeper into it is the tracing.rs.

We have implemented barebones support for this tracing API in the 6.0.0-alpha
versions of ink! + cargo-contract. But it's really barebones and should
certainly be improved before a production release.

Detection of contract language disabled

The heuristic detection of a contract's language in cargo contract info
has been temporarily disabled; it's not yet implemented.

Contract sizes

Contracts compiled with v6.0.0-alpha will have a large file size. This is due to a number
of bugs in PolkaVM that prohibit us from using e.g. LTO. The contract sizes will eventually
get much smaller again, once those bugs are fixed.

Linting

Linting of a contract can be executed by running the lint command:

➜ cargo contract lint --help
Lint a contract

Usage: cargo contract lint [OPTIONS]

Options:
      --manifest-path <MANIFEST_PATH>
          Path to the `Cargo.toml` of the contract to build

      --quiet
          No output printed to stdout

      --verbose
          Use verbose output

      --extra-lints
          Performs extra linting checks during the build process. Basic clippy lints are deemed important and run anyway.

  -h, --help
          Print help (see a summary with '-h')

Or can be executed programmatically:

let crate_metadata = CrateMetadata::collect(manifest_path)?;
let verbosity = TryFrom::<&VerbosityFlags>::try_from(&self.verbosity)?;

contract_build::lint(extra_lint, &crate_metadata, &verbosity);

Please see #2013 for more information.

Ability to generate Solidity metadata for a contract

ink! v6 will have the ability to speak Solidity, you'll be able to integrate
with tools like Metamask and call ink! contracts from Solidity as if they were
a pre-compile.

We added a new subcommand for this:

cargo contract build ---metadata <ink|solidity>

Please see #1930 for more information.

Changed

Target pallet-revive instead of pallet-contracts - #1851
Retrieve PolkaVM target spec from linker - #1939

Added

Add option to generate Solidity compatible metadata (via cargo contract build ---metadata <ink|solidity>) - #1930
Deny overflowing (and lossy) integer type cast operations - #1895
Remove linting by default, --skip-linting and --lint flag in cargo contract build and add a new command lint - #2013

Fixed

Resolved verifiable-build image failures within release-verifiable-image workflow - #2018

Added

Deny overflowing (and lossy) integer type cast operations - #1895

Fixed

Use latest ink! release version in new contract template - #1896

Changed

Made extrinsic call types, upload, and events public - #1873

Changed

Bumped the ink! dependencies to ink! 5.1.0 - #1837
Synchronized the sp-* dependencies with the ones used in ink! 5.1.0 - #1837

This release concludes the migration of ink! from Parity to the outside world. It doesn't come with any new features, we just:

…changed the Parity URLs to ones for our new GitHub organization
@use-ink.
…upgraded many dependencies to newer versions, which results in two particular
breaking changes regarding compatibility:
- We had to remove support for Substrate metadata that is below
  V14 in #1722. Metadata formats below V14 are quite old and we hope this doesn't affect anyone.
- cargo-contract v5 works only with Rust >= 1.81.

For the linter in cargo-contract the Rust toolchain version changed. To upgrade:

export TOOLCHAIN_VERSION=nightly-2024-09-05
rustup install $TOOLCHAIN_VERSION
rustup component add rust-src --toolchain $TOOLCHAIN_VERSION
rustup run $TOOLCHAIN_VERSION cargo install cargo-dylint dylint-link

Changed

Updated the toolchain version used by ink_linting - #1616
Update repository URLs & references from paritytech GitHub organization to new use-ink one ‒ #1663
Bump the version of subxt and subxt-signer - #1722

Removed

Remove support for V11 metadata #1722

Fixed

Fix "chain configuration not found" error (Rust 1.79) - #1821
Validate externally passed Rust toolchain identifiers - #1817
For contract verification: don't rely on Wasm hash in metadata - #1820

Fixed

Fix "chain configuration not found" error - #1786

What's Changed

Fixed

Remove parity-wasm dependency from contract-build crate - #1594
chore: Update toolchain for ink_linting - #1616
chore: bump subxt and subxt-signer versions - #1722

Added

Add support for cargo build --verifiable --lint command - #1512
Add new image deployment repo - #1620
Switch to useink image in verifiable build command - #1622

Full Changelog: v4.1.1...v5.0.0-alpha

Fixed

Remove mention of non-existent argument, improve clarity of warning message - #1590

Fixed

Fix the instantiate command for Substrate 0.9.42 based chains - #1564

Added

Add cargo contract storage --version command - #1564
Add cargo contract verify --wasm argument - #1551
Add cargo contract instantiate --chain with production chain endpoints - #1290
Warn when uploading unverifiable contract builds to production - #1290

Releases: use-ink/cargo-contract

v6.0.0-alpha

Updated structs + function arguments

Types

Contract Balance: U256

Contract Address: H160

Contract Hash: H256

Events

Debugging

Detection of contract language disabled

Contract sizes

Linting

Ability to generate Solidity metadata for a contract

Changed

Added

Fixed

Uh oh!

v5.0.3

Added

Fixed

Uh oh!

v5.0.2

Changed

Uh oh!

v5.0.1

Changed

Uh oh!

v5.0.0

Changed

Removed

Uh oh!

v4.1.3

Fixed

Uh oh!

v4.1.2

Fixed

Uh oh!

v5.0.0-alpha

What's Changed

Fixed

Added

Uh oh!

v4.1.1

Fixed

Uh oh!

v4.1.0

Fixed

Added

Uh oh!

Contract Balance: `U256`

Contract Address: `H160`

Contract Hash: `H256`