creating-a-new-project.md

Creating a New Project

To start a new project with Foundry, use forge init:

$ forge init hello_foundry

This creates a new directory hello_foundry from the default template. This also initializes a new git repository.

If you want to create a new project using a different template, you would pass the --template flag, like so:

$ forge init --template https://github.com/FrankieIsLost/forge-template hello_template

For now, let's check what the default template looks like:

$ cd hello_foundry
$ tree .
.
├── lib
│   └── ds-test
└── src
    ├── Contract.sol
    └── test
        └── Contract.t.sol

6 directories, 7 files

The default template comes with one dependency installed: ds-test. This is the preferred assertion library used for Foundry projects. Additionally, the template also comes with an empty starter contract and a simple test.

Let's build the project:

$ forge build
compiling...
success.

And run the tests:

$ forge test
compiling...
no files changed, compilation skipped.
Running 1 test for ContractTest.json:ContractTest
[PASS] testExample() (gas: 120)

You'll notice that two new directories have popped up: out and cache.

The out directory contains your contract artifact, such as the ABI, while the cache is used by forge to only recompile what is necessary.