IBCTL CLI tool

Developers can interact with the IBC SDK either through the API or the CLI tool, ibctl. In this section we review how to use the CLI to use the IBC SDK and speed up your development and testing cycles.

The help command

As with many CLI tools, the help (-h or --help) commmand will become your new best friend. Let's get to know what's out there to discover.

When you run the help command on ibctl, you get an overview of the available commands:

ibctl binary

You'll need to have the binary built and available in your $PATH for this to work.

> ibctl -h

# terminal output
Usage: ibctl [options] [command]

IBC SDK control

Options:
  -l, --log-level <level>                                        Log level (choices: "error", "warn", "info", "verbose", "debug", default: "info")
  -w, --workspace <workspace>                                    Working directory (default: /Users/thomasdekeyser/.ibc-sdk)
  -V, --version                                                  output the version number
  -h, --help                                                     Display help command

Commands:
  init [options]                                                 Initializes the workspace
  start [options]                                                Start the local stack as defined in <workspace>/config.yaml
  show                                                           Shows the state of the local stack
  stop [options]                                                 Stop the stack defined in the workspace
  channel <endpoint-a> <endpoint-b>                              Creates an IBC channel between two endpoints. The endpoint format must be
                                                                 `chain_id:port_id:version`
  exec <args...>                                                 Runs a command on the container, selected by its name.The name can be of the format
                                                                 `name:label` like the one in the `show` output. A partial match is enough to select the
                                                                 chain: i.e. use "poly" to match a container called "polymer-0:main". Only one match is
                                                                 allowed per command.
  deploy <chain-name> <account> <smart-contract-path> [args...]  Deploys a smart contract on the selected chain. If the SC constructor needs arguments, list
                                                                 them in order
  archive-logs [options]                                         Fetches logs from all components in the stack and archives them in a tarball
  logs [options] <component-name>                                Fetches the logs from any component of the stack. It mimics the `docker logs` functionality
                                                                 with similar options.
  trace-packets [options] <endpoint-a> <endpoint-b>              Trace packet execution over the specified endpoints. The endpoint format must be
                                                                 `chain_id:channel_id:port_id`
  channels [options] <chain-name>                                Queries the IBC channels on the selected Cosmos chain. The chain name can be in the form of
                                                                 `name:label`.
  connections [options] <chain-name>                             Queries the IBC connections on the selected Cosmos chain. The chain name can be in the form
                                                                 of `name:label`.
  clients [options] <chain-name>                                 Queries the IBC clients on the selected Cosmos chain. The chain name can be in the form of
                                                                 `name:label`.
  tx [options] <chain-name> <tx-hash>                            Queries a transaction on the selected chain. The chain name can be in the form of
                                                                 `name:label`.
  accounts [options] <chain-name>                                Queries the auto-generated accounts on the selected chain. The chain name can be in the
                                                                 form of `name:label`.
  events [options] <chain-name>                                  Queries events from a chain, given the provided height ranges and prints them out in a
                                                                 readable way
  help [command]                                                 display help for command

Let's discuss the commands one by one in the following sections or get to work if the commands seem self-explanatory to you.