Daml Assistant

Overview

The Daml Assistant provides a uniform CLI and installation experience for the components of the Daml SDK. Use the Daml Assistant to develop your Daml code.

Install

For Linux and MacOS, run

curl -sSL https://get.daml.com/ | sh -s 3.3.0-snapshot.20250507.0

For Windows 10/11, download and run the installer from the GitHub releases page.

These methods will install the most recent Daml SDK with its Daml Assistant, and add daml to your PATH, though you may need to restart your terminal for this to take effect.

Configure

Daml assistant uses a daml-config.yaml file to configure SDK installation behaviour. On Linux/MacOS, this will be in $DAML_HOME. On Windows, it will be in %DAML_HOME%.

In this file you can configure the following:

• auto-install

  Value: true or false

  Default: true on Linux and MacOS, false on Windows.

  Determines whether the Daml Assistant should automatically install an SDK if a package uses it, and it isn’t installed.
• update-check

  Value: Integer or never

  Default: 86400 (1 day)

  How often the Daml Assistant will check for new versions of the SDK, in seconds.
• artifactory-api-key

  Value: String

  Default: None

  If you have a license for Daml EE, you can use this to specify the Artifactory API key displayed in your user profile. The assistant will use this to download the EE edition.

Operate

Version Management

Daml Assistant supports installation of several versions of the SDK at the same time.

Run daml install <sdk-version> to install additional SDKs. The version string can be found on the GitHub releases page.

Run daml uninstall <sdk-version> to remove installed instances.

Run daml version to list all installed instances. This will also show the default SDK version (the highest version), as well as the selected version, if specified by a daml.yaml file. If the daml.yaml specifies an SDK version you do not have installed, the daml version output will specify this. If auto-install is set to true in daml-config.yaml above, running any package command (such as daml build) will first install this SDK for you.

Daml Command - Build and Clean

Given a daml.yaml and .daml source files, the daml build command will generate a .dar for this package. See How to build Daml Archives for how to define a package and build it to a DAR. The daml clean command will remove any Daml artifact files created in your package during a daml build, including the .dar.

Daml Command - Test

The daml test command runs all daml scripts defined within a package. Daml Scripts are top level values of type Script (), from the daml-script package. This package mimics a Canton Ledger Client for quick iterative testing, and direct support within Daml Studio. Daml Test runs these scripts against a reference Ledger called the IDE Ledger, which implements the core functionality of the Canton Ledger without the complexity of multi-participant setups. It is most useful for verifying the fundamentals of your ledger model, before moving onto integration testing via the Ledger API directly, or the Daml Codegen. Daml Test also provides code coverage information for templates and choices used.

Other Daml Commands

• daml studio:

  See Daml Studio
• daml new <name>:

  Creates a package skeleton with the given name/directory. Use the --template flag to select a different package template. Run daml new --list for a list of these templates.
• daml start:

  Starts a Daml Sandbox and upload this package. See Daml Sandbox
• daml sandbox:

  Starts a Daml Sandbox. See Daml Sandbox

• daml damlc: Sub-command for the Daml Compiler. Commands like daml build and daml test redirect to this sub-command, and thus are repeated. Some commands are only accessible via daml damlc <command>, as follows:

  • daml damlc inspect-dar FILE:

    Given a path to a .dar file, this will give information about the packages contained within the DAR.
  • daml damlc docs

    This can be used to generate documentation from Daml Documentation Annotations in Daml code. See Daml Docs for more information.
  • daml damlc lint:

    This provides code improvement suggestions for your daml code.
• daml codegen:

  See Daml Codegen for Java and Daml Codegen for Javascript
• daml script:

  See Daml Script
• canton-console:

  See Canton Console
• upgrade-check:

  See Upgrade Check Tool

Upgrade

The Daml Assistant will automatically upgrade whenever you install a more recent version of the Daml SDK (using the daml install command above).

If you wish to specify the version of the Daml Assistant (Note that this is just the Assistant, not the SDK, which contains the compiler. The version of the SDK is controlled by the daml.yaml), then use daml install <version> --install-assistant=yes. This can be used for versions that are already installed.

Decomission

Linux/MacOS

Run rm -rf $DAML_HOME, then one of the following based on which shell you are running:

• Zsh: sed -i -E '/^export PATH=\$PATH:[^ ;\n]+\.daml/bin/d' ~/.zprofile

• Bash: sed -i -E '/^export PATH=\$PATH:[^ ;\n]+\.daml/bin/d' ~/.bash_profile

• Sh: sed -i -E '/^export PATH=\$PATH:[^ ;\n]+\.daml/bin/d' ~/.profile

Windows

Uninstall Daml via the Add or Remove Programs interface, as you would any other Windows program.

Troubleshoot

Command 'daml' not found, did you mean:

Try adding Daml to your PATH manually, by adding export PATH=$PATH:$DAML_HOME/bin to your zprofile/bash_profile/profile file, depending on which shell you are using.

The Daml installation requires around 1.5 GB of disk space. If there is not enough space on disk, the installer outputs the error: `` resource exhausted (No space left on device) ``

In order to fix this problem, one needs to ensure sufficient disk space overall. In particular, the directory where the Daml SDK installs, and the temporary files directory need to have sufficient space (i.e., in the order of 2GiB each):

• On Windows, one can find the Daml SDK home directory in the %DAML_HOME% environment variable, which default to %APPDATA%/daml, and the temporary files directory in the %TEMP% environment variable

• On Linux and MacOS, one can find the Daml SDK home directory also in the DAML_HOME environment variable, which defaults to ~/.daml, and the temporary files directory in the TMPDIR environment variable

If the installer cannot ensure sufficient space in the Daml SDK’s home directory (DAML_HOME) and the temporary files directory, an alternative is to change the location of these directories before the installation. To do so, call the installer with DAML_HOME and TMPDIR environment variables pointing to directories that have sufficient space:

• On Windows, first set the environment variables. Then run the installation as usual.

• On Linus and MacOS, run in a terminal:

Avoid choosing directories for DAML_HOME and TMPDIR environment variables that are located inside the unzipped installation directory sdk-x.x.x, as otherwise the installer fails.

Contribute

See the open source GitHub repository: https://github.com/digital-asset/daml

References

CLI flags

See Daml Assistant Flags

Configuration files

See Daml Asssistant Configuration Files

• Daml Assistant flags
• Daml Assistant configuration files