NDX-DN05 - NEO Toolkit for .NET

Abstract

This design note describes the features and design of the libraries and tools used by .NET developers to target the NEO platform.

.NET Libraries distributed via NuGet. Common tasks across in/on/off chain development should have similar if not identical programming models as per UPM Focus on in-chain (aka smart contract) and off-chain scenarios to start.
templates for NEO projects distributed via NuGet. Templates include tasks (preferably inline tasks) for running NEON as part of the build process
NEON compiler distributed as .NET global tool. Potentially re-write NEON compiler. At a minimum, NEON compiler needs to emit information needed by debugger and support compiling .NET Standard assemblies -> NeoVM)
on/off chain apps are basically standard .NET apps (cmd line, GUI, mobile, etc) that use a NEO library distributed via NuGet. simply dotnet add package and you're done.
- Note, we already can do this for on-chain development by simply adding the neo package via nuget. However, I'm thinking that we could provide a better and more modular framework for on-chain developers
in chain apps have custom inner loop:
1. New contract: "dotnet new neocontract"
2. Edit contract: This is just the standard VSCode editing experience. No extension needed
3. Compile contract: neocontract template includes custom (inline) build tasks in proj file to invoke NEON during build
4. Debug Contract: Run the contract in the NEO contract Debugger. VSCode debugger extension includes configuration snippets to help developers quickly configure their launch.json file for debugging.