This post was originally published on the Our World blog on 17th October 2020:
Greetings Friends,
As some may be aware, the new shiny refactored version of Holochain was recently announced, which is claimed to be up to 1000 times faster than the previous version! Along with many more improvements and optimisations. Please see this excellent article from the co-founder Art Brock below for more details:
We are therefore now working on upgrading HoloNET (.NET & Unity Client) and the .NET HDK to the new version. HoloNET was released last year and was featured in Dev Pulse 44, see more details here:
The .NET HDK is well into development and allows dynamic rust and C# code to be generated from very simple C# and Rust templates. There are many advantages to this, some of which are listed below:
Rapid hApp development - Because this is a higher level abstraction layer over the low-level Rust code, you do not need to worry about the underlying holochain rust code or any boiller plate code, you can simply focus on the business logic and allow the .NET HDK to take care of the rest. It will automatically generate all necessary Rust, C# and WASM code, as well as compile, test and deploy.
Allows debugging of hApp - Currently the Rust HDK does not allow you to debug your code, but because C# code is managed, you can step through your code line by line making tracking and finding bugs much easier.
Provide wizards, templates for many use cases such as websites, apps, desktop apps, services, web services, games, etc. There will also be templates/assets/packages created for Unity. Both .NET & Unity are massively cross platform and allow you to create any sort of app, website, service, game you can dream off...
Due to it using a templating engine, C# and Rust templates can be easily customised to fit peoples needs, for example you can easily switch between generating Holochain Redux (previous version of Holochain) or Holochain RSM (latest version, soon to be released).
Harness the power of Rust, C# & Unity - Because the HDK uses both Rust and C# it opens up many more options, libraries, resources etc you can use.
.NET is a mature powerful language used by millions of individuals & businesses worldwide, this will open the door to many more devs around the world to come and help you with your hApp project.
Related to the above point, this will open the door to the massive .NET and Unity ecosystems, turbo charging the Holochain ecosystem.
Open up Holochain to the massive business enterprises that run .NET code. This coupled with the above point, will take Holochain mainstream.
It will also be integrated with the OASIS API/ODK (OASIS Development Kit) allowing developers to take advantage of the full power of the OASIS, allowing them to bridge to anything else such as EOSIO, Ethereum, ThreeFold, ActivityPub, SOLID, IPFS & many more. For a full list please view theGitHub repo.
The OASIS API is an abstraction layer of the entire internet allowing everything to talk to everything else, similar to the pluggable protocol in CEPTR. This will create a bridge and migration path for people to migrate to Holochain from any previous network, protocol,
platform or network stack as well as promote Holochain through all existing platforms & networks.
Allow people to write their dApp once (OAPP - OASIS App) and then deploy and run ANYWHERE without ever needing to port or change it ever again, they can call EOSIO, Ethereum smart contracts from Holochain for example.
As you may have seen on a recent announcement, the OASIS API is now LIVE and is ready to be used and integrated into existing apps, websites, games, etc. The API along with documentation can be found below:
Please view theannouncement for more details on what is included in this release along with upcoming ones.
So as you can see, some very exciting times ahead... and we hope you now see how vital this project is to the Holochain ecosystem, we would love to have your help to speed up this vital work so if you feel like getting involved we would love to hear from you! Thank you.
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