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Version: 3.x (unreleased)

Quick Start

1. Prerequisites​

Mops downloads and manages the Motoko toolchain itself — moc, pocket-ic, wasmtime, lintoko, wasm-opt. It does not need dfx installed, and does not support it.

2. Install Mops CLI​

Install from on-chain storage

curl -fsSL cli.mops.one/install.sh | sh

or install from npm registry

npm i -g ic-mops

3. Initialize​

Run this command in the root directory of your project

mops init

4. Pin the Motoko compiler​

Every command that compiles — mops build, mops check, mops test — uses the moc pinned in mops.toml.

mops toolchain use moc latest

Run mops toolchain info moc --versions to see what is available, and see toolchain management for the rest of the tools.

5. Install Motoko Packages​

Use mops add to install a specific package and save it to mops.toml

mops add core

6. Import Package​

Now you can import installed packages in your Motoko code

import Array "mo:core/Array";

7. Deploy​

Mops builds and type-checks; it does not deploy. Use icp, whose Motoko recipe builds each canister with mops build, so the moc you pinned above is the compiler that produces the deployed Wasm.

Mops does not support dfx. mops sources still prints --package flags for any build tool that takes a packtool, but it carries dependencies only — a tool that brings its own compiler will not use your pinned moc.