The air CLI utility

The air CLI utility is a helper tool for Aqua and AIR developers. It has three subcommands: beautify, run and stats.

air beautify

Alias: air b.

This subcommand reads an AIR script from standard input and prints it in human-readable Python-like representation. This representation cannot be executed and is intended to be read by mere mortals.

It outputs to standard output or a file.

air run

Alias: air r.

Executes an AIR script with data in WASM AquaVM. It has two modes of parameter input: plain and anomaly.

Common parameters

All common parameters are optional. Their position is always before the mode selector (--plain or --anomaly).

• --call-results PATH parameter allows you to provide call results for current execution.
• --max-heap-size N defines maximum heap size for WASM runtime.
• --interpreter PATH option defines the AquaVM WASM binary to be executed. By default, it is "target/wasm32-wasi/release/air_interpreter_server.wasm", but you can define a global value with the AIR_INTERPRETER_WASM_PATH environment variable. The default presumes that the tool is run from the root of this repository. Feel free to use option or environment variable to run from any location.
• with the --json option, tracing info is output (to stderr) in machine-readable JSON format. The output can be later processed with air stats subcommand.
• --tracing-params defines tracing logging levels for AquaVM. By default, it is equal to info and does trace the most high-level AquaVM constructions (data parsing, AIR script parsing, execution). With debug level it traces some individual commands, and with trace level it traces even more fine grained functionality, but it induce more overhead.
• --runner-tracing-params defines tracing logging level for the runner. By default, it is equal to warn.
• --random-key or --ed25519-key keyfile (required): use random signing key or load it from a file.

The important option is the execution mode --native. It runs the AquaVM as the native code that can be profiled with any native profiler. As input data deserialization and serialization time can be comparable to particle execution time, and short execution times provides less reliable results, one can use --repeat N option to repeat particle execution several times. Execution result is not printed in this case, so you may run --repeat 1 to suppress it.

Another alternative execution mode is --near, enabled by with near feature flag. It runs a NEAR contract defined by the --near-contract option, measuring its gas consumption. The workspaces crate in sandbox mode is used for the most accurate NEAR gas measurement. The workspaces build script installs NEAR Sandbox automatically, but on the other machines you have to install it manually and set the NEAR_SANDBOX_BIN_PATH variable.

Run air run --help to see all common parameters.

Plain mode

In the --plain mode, the parameters like AIR script path, data path, previous data path and other particle fields can be provided in separate arguments (all of them are optional, and AIR script is read from stdin by default).

Run air run --plain --help to see all plain mode options.

Anomaly mode

In the anomaly mode, the only argument is a path to self-contained anomaly data file obtained from rust-peer's Anomaly Particle Detection System.

Run air run --anomaly --help to see all anomaly mode options.

air stats

Alias: air s.

This subcommand allows to process JSON trace collected with air run --json. It has two primary options:

• --pretty outputs JSON trace in human readable format.
• --stats outputs execution summary.

By default, both options are effective.

The --sort-stats-by-duration flag sorts spans by time, not by name, in the report.

Please, note that currently tracing outputs to stdout, and execution result is also printed to stdout. You may suppress printing the result with air run --repeat 1 option.

Known limitations

1. At detailed tracing levels (debug etc), trace formatting time is comparable to traced code execution time and can give incorrect results.

Installation

AIR interpreter

Unless you intend to run AIR in native mode, you will need a AIR interpreter build in WASM. You can build it with the marine tool. Run following command in the repo's root directory:

marine build --features marine --package air-interpreter --release

It will output the binary to default --interpreter path at target/wasm32-wasi/release/air_interpreter_server.wasm; if you wish to run the air from arbitrary place, store the air_interpreter_server.wasm binary in a cool dry place and either set AIR_INTERPRETER_WASM_PATH variable or use the --interpreter common option of air run.

air binary

You need to have Rust toolchain and its cargo utility installed. Run this command to install latest released version from crates.io:

cargo install aquavm-air-cli

You may install developer version from the repo's root:

cargo install --path tools/cli/air

air CLI native build

You can build fully native or pure WASM air CLI build with the following commands:

cargo build --no-default-features --release -p aquavm-air-cli
cargo build --no-default-features --release -p aquavm-air-cli --target wasm32-wasi

This build doesn't need the AIR interpreter WASM binary.