KORAL / GET STARTED

Build your first program

This guide starts in a Koral utility source checkout. Commands below run from that directory. No published Gradle plugin or public package coordinate is assumed.

Requirements

Recorded toolchain: Kotlin 2.2.21, Gradle 8.14.6, Agave 3.1.10 / platform-tools 1.52, and LiteSVM 1.6.1. Other hosts are not verified by this guide.

Build the CLI

./gradlew test :cli:installDist
export KORAL_SBF_SDK=/path/to/solana-release/bin/platform-tools-sdk/sbf
cli/build/install/koral/bin/koral doctor

Replace the SDK path with your local installation. It must provide c/inc, c/sbf.ld, and dependencies/platform-tools. Koral does not install the SDK for you.

Check and compile

cli/build/install/koral/bin/koral check examples/typed-counter.kt
cli/build/install/koral/bin/koral build examples/typed-counter.kt --out build/counter

The check command validates source without requiring an SBF SDK. The build command also invokes native tools. Keep the output directory separate from the source directory.

Run the Counter verification

npm ci --prefix cli/build/install/koral/testing
cli/build/install/koral/bin/koral test build/counter/counter.so

The test command is Counter-specific. It is not a general test runner for every possible state layout or payment program. Testing and errors explains the separate payment verifier.

Inspect the result

Open counter.c, counter.ir, counter.build.json, and counter.abi.json beside counter.so. All builds currently retain the counter basename, including payment builds. These commands execute locally; they do not deploy a program or transfer real funds.

If using an extracted CLI distribution rather than the source checkout, use bin/koral and its bundled examples/testing directories. The source-checkout Gradle command is not required inside an extracted distribution.