Setting up a development environment

A usual and sensible approach to develop and test Ethereum smart contracts is within a local private net or a simulated environment like Ganache. After all the relevant tests are successful on a public test net, the contracts can then be deployed to the public main net. There are, however, variations in this process.

Many developers opt to only develop and test contracts on a local simulated environment and then deploy them onto the public main net or their private/enterprise production blockchain networks. Developing first on a simulated environment and then deploying directly to a public network can lead to faster time to production, as setting up private networks may take longer compared to setting up a local development environment with a blockchain simulator.

There are new tools and frameworks available, like Truffle and Ganache, which make development and testing for Ethereum easier. We will look into these tools in more depth in...