Development Environments

This guide covers setting up your development environment for building zero-knowledge circuits with Fermah's supported proof systems.

System Requirements

For a complete development environment, you'll need:

IDE Setup

VSCode Extensions

1. Circuit Development

   • Circom Syntax Highlighting
   • Rust Analyzer (for RISC Zero)
   • LLVM IR Syntax (for Valida)

2. Testing & Debugging

   • Test Explorer UI
   • Code Runner

Interactive Development

• zkREPL

  • Browser-based circuit editor
  • Real-time syntax checking
  • Code sharing capabilities
  • Interactive testing

• RISC Zero Playground

  • Guest program development
  • Code examples
  • Interactive documentation
  • Testing environment

Language-Specific Setup

Circom (Groth16)

# Install Node.js dependencies
npm install -g circom

# Install circuit templates
npm install circomlib

RISC Zero

# Install Rust toolchain
curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh

# Add RISC Zero target
rustup target add riscv32im-risc0-zkvm-elf

Valida

# Install LLVM dependencies
sudo apt-get install llvm-dev libclang-dev clang

# Install Valida toolchain
cargo install valida-cli

Editor Configuration

VSCode Settings

{
  "editor.formatOnSave": true,
  "circom.trace.server": "verbose",
  "rust-analyzer.checkOnSave.command": "clippy",
  "[circom]": {
    "editor.defaultFormatter": "iden3.circom"
  }
}

Git Configuration

Recommended .gitignore

# Circuit artifacts
*.r1cs
*.sym
*.wasm
*.zkey

# Build directories
target/
build/
node_modules/

# IDE files
.vscode/
.idea/
*.swp

Next Steps

1. Start writing circuits
2. Learn about testing
3. Return to overview