Feature request: output AST in the SDK

[MarvinJanssen]

Asking for the possibility of receiving contract AST in clarinet run. I remember one of the very early versions of this command having the capability (although I might be wrong).

I want to make a simplistic analyser that checks if a given contract conforms to the SIP-013 semi-fungible token standard stacksgov/sips#42.

The SIP defines parameters that cannot be captured by mere trait compliance. I wanted to use the AST to check if there is some usage of specific Clarity primitives; including, but not limited to:

• Check if transfer calls both ft-transfer? and nft-burn?.
• Check if the contract prints the right events.
• ...and so on.

If it works, I am even thinking about generalising such a check system into a separate SIP. Then future SIPs that describe contracts could add a reference trait as well as an AST check. (Cool future feature for Clarinet as well?)

[unclemantis]

Sounds cool!

[obycode]

Sounds a bit like #463.

We've been discussing enabling extensions using the ASTVisitor trait (see https://github.com/hirosystems/clarity-repl/blob/develop/src/analysis/ast_visitor.rs). I will work on this soon.

[obycode]

Ignore my last comment. I discussed with @lgalabru and now understand that defining a plugin in Rust is not what we're looking for here. We can just expose the AST in Typescript (and maybe later create an ASTVisitor for Typescript).

[MarvinJanssen]

@obycode wondering if there have been any follow-up discussions on this feature request? I would love to include a SIP013 validator script for stacksgov/sips#42.

With the AST exposed, I could make a script that checks:

1. if the public functions call the right native functions; e.g., transfer calls ft-transfer?, etc..
2. if the burn-and-mint post condition mechanism exists.
3. if the proper events are emitted.

[obycode]

Hi @MarvinJanssen. I have not been able to prioritize this yet. How urgent is your need?

[MarvinJanssen]

@obycode Not sure, it is definitely not a requirement for SIP013 or the other SIP we will be working on at the Lab. However, it would definitely be cool. Is it a lot of work? Maybe I could take a crack at it. Anything in Rust just takes ages for me to figure out.

[obycode]

I'm not really sure what kind of effort this will take. I have not looked at this code path yet. I'm going to take a look now...

[obycode]

I think the key task for this is going to be figuring out how to represent the AST in the JSON (which gets passed from Rust to Typescript).

[hugocaillard]

Is this still need?
I think we might be able quite easily to the @clarinet-sdk (in progress #1065)

[hugocaillard]

I slightly repurposed this issue following the deprecation of clarinet run and the release of clarinet sdk

[hugocaillard]

Addressed in #1162