Introduction

The aragonCLI (Command Line Interface) is used to create, develop, configure and manage Aragon DAOs and Applications.

Installation

Installation pre-requisites

The following must be installed prior to installation:

• Node + npm + yarn

  • We recommend to install Node using Node Version Manager or NVM. You can find instructions on how to install NVM and Node here.

  • After downloading and unpacking, you must add the /bin folder to your $PATH.

Dependencies of aragonCLI are constantly updated which result in Node version errors. Use NVM to install and select the right Node version. For compatibility across OS use Node v12.7 LTS version.

Also using yarn instead of npm as package manager is advised in some cases. Find how to install yarn.

For Linux:

• git

  • Install this using the command sudo apt install git

• python

  • Install this using the command sudo apt install python

• make

  • Install this using the command sudo apt install make

• g++

  • Install this using the command sudo apt install g++

For Mac:

• git

  • Install this using the official installer. We recommend using the package manager Homebrew, in this case use the command brew install git.

Note: Python comes pre-installed on Mac.

For Windows:

• windows-build-tools

  • Install with npm i windows-build-tools

Install aragonCLI

The aragonCLI can be installed from NPM:

npm install -g @aragon/cli

Dependencies of aragonCLI are constantly updated which result in Node version errors. Use NVM to install and select the right Node version. For compatibility across OS use Node v12.7 LTS version.

Also using yarn instead of npm as package manager is advised in some cases. Find how to install yarn.

In case the above does not work, aragonCLI can also be built and installed from the source with the following commands:

git clone https://github.com/aragon/aragon-cli.git
cd aragon-cli
yarn
cd packages
yarn
npm run build
cd cli
npm install -g
cd ../create-aragon-app
npm install -g
cd ../toolkit
npm install -g
cd ../../..

If you're seeing errors similar to:

EACCES: permission denied

It's probably because you originally installed Node with root permissions. Because of this, writing to your npm directory (npm -i -g) requires root permissions too.

While it's not a good idea to have Node installed this way, one way to quickly give yourself root permissions is to run the slightly modified command:

sudo npm i -g --unsafe-perm @aragon/cli

An arguably better way to fix the problem is to follow the steps outlined in this stackoverflow answer.

After installing aragonCLI, the main aragon executable will be available for use. Also, the dao alias will be available which is a shortcut for aragon dao commands.

The ~/.aragon directory

The aragonCLI creates the .aragon directory under the user's home directory, where it saves the state of the devchain and the Aragon client. At the moment, this folder is only automatically created after running aragon devchain once, but can also be created by via mkdir ~/.aragon.

Set a private key

Warning

The default mnemonic for the Aragon CLI is the same for all users. If you are going to deploy contracts to public networks it is highly recommended that you use your own web3 provider and set your own private key.

You can configure a private key for the Aragon CLI in ~/.aragon. To do so you will need to create a file <network>_key.json (eg. rinkeby_key.json) with this structure:

{
  "rpc": "https://<network>.infura.io",
  "keys": ["put-your-priv-key-here"]
}

You can easily create a new file from the terminal. Find how to do it for Linux and Mac and for Windows.

Then if you use --env aragon:<network> when using the aragonCLI it will use that account.

You can also define an ~/.aragon/mnemonic.json file like:

{
  "mnemonic": "explain tackle mirror kit ..."
}

Install IPFS

Since v6.0.0 we separate the installation of go-ipfs from the aragonCLI. If you do not have it installed globally on your system we have a couple of commands to help with that:aragon ipfs install and aragon ipfs uninstall.

Global options

Options that change the behaviour of the aragon command:

• --environment: The environment in your arapp.json that you want to use. Defaults to aragon:local. Check the other default environments. You can also use it with the --env alias.
• --gas-price: Gas price in Gwei. Defaults to 2.

• --use-frame: Use Frame as a signing provider and web3 provider.

• --ens-registry: Address of the ENS registry. This will be overwritten if the selected environment from your arapp.json includes a registry property.

• --ipfs-gateway: An URI to the IPFS Gateway to read files from. Defaults to http://localhost:8080/ipfs.

• --ipfs-rpc: An URI to the IPFS node used to publish files. Defaults to http://localhost:5001#default.

• --cwd: Project working directory.

• --debug: Show more output to terminal.

• --silent: Silence output to terminal.

Example

aragon <command> --environment aragon:mainnet --gas-price 1 --use-frame --debug

create-aragon-app

This command will set up an Aragon app project so you can start building your app from a functional boilerplate.

npx create-aragon-app <app-name> [boilerplate]

• app-name: The name or ENS domain name for your app in an aragonPM Registry (e.g. myapp or myapp.aragonpm.eth). If only the name is provided it will create your app on the default aragonpm.eth registry.

• boilerplate: (optional) the Github repo name or alias for a boilerplate to set up your app. The currently available boilerplates are:

  • react: this boilerplate contains a very basic Counter app and a webapp for interacting with it. It showcases the end-to-end interaction with an Aragon app, from the contracts to the webapp. Also it comes with a DAO Template which will allow for using your app to interact with other Aragon apps like the Voting app. You can read more about DAO Template here.
  • bare: this boilerplate will just set up your app directory structure but contains no functional code.

  • tutorial: this boilerplate is the one used in the "Your first Aragon app" guide.
  • other available boilerplates you can find here.

Note Npx is an independent package, it's not necessary to have @aragon/cli installed to use it. npx comes with npm 5.2+. If you use npm 5.1 or earlier, you can't use npx. Instead, install create-aragon-app globally