Canton Daml Environment Setup

Overview

Daml is the smart-contract language for Canton ledgers. Before writing contracts, set up the SDK toolchain and an IDE. The primary tool is dpm (the Daml SDK CLI); the IDE is VS Code + the Daml extension (Daml Studio).

Prerequisites

• Install dpm — see canton-daml-sdk and canton-docs/sdks-tools/cli-tools/dpm.mdx. Run dpm version to list installed SDK versions.
• VS Code with the Daml extension for syntax highlighting, type-checking, and the Script results lens.

Scaffold a project

dpm new creates a project from a template:

dpm new my-app                              # minimal skeleton
dpm new intro-contracts --template daml-intro-contracts   # tutorial: templates
dpm new intro-choices  --template daml-intro-choices      # tutorial: choices
dpm new intro-parties  --template daml-intro-parties      # tutorial: authorization

Each tutorial section in the App Development module loads as a self-contained dpm new ... --template daml-intro-* project.