Spawner

The "spawner" was the original method for instantiating contract code within the chain's swingset. This on-chain usage has been entirely superseded by Zoe, and the chain swingset no longer includes a spawner.

However, it was also pressed into service in the ag-solo swingset for executing deploy scripts that need to leave code running after the script finishes, such as an HTTP API handler. This use case is still active, but none of the callers need the zoe-like features (comparable contract identity, source retrieval, issuers, invitations, or seats). These callers now do something like:

  const bundlePath = new URL('src/wallet.js', import.meta.url).pathname;
  const bundle = await bundleSource(bundlePath);
  const walletInstall = E(spawner).install(bundle);
  const walletVat = await E(walletInstall).spawn(args);

So the spawner is now a stripped-down dynamic-vat creation frontend with the minimal code necessary to satisfy those callers.

The spawner expects to be running in a vat. It used to evaluate the submitted code in its own vat, under "within-vat" metering to protect itself from runaway guest code. It has been rewritten to evaluate the guest in a new dynamic vat instead.

To support a spawner, your swingset must provide it with the vatAdmin facet (to create new vats), and a copy of the vat-spawned.js bundle (to install in the new vat). Your vat-spawner.js should look like:

import { Far } from '@endo/marshal';
import { makeSpawner } from '@agoric/spawner';
function buildRootObject() {
  return Far('root', {
    buildSpawner(vatAdminSvc) {
      return makeSpawner(vatAdminSvc);
    }
  });
}
harden(buildRootObject);
export { buildRootObject };

And your bootstrap function needs something like this:

return Far('root', {
  async bootstrap(vats, devices) {
    const vatAdminSvc = await E(vats.vatAdmin).createVatAdminService(
      devices.vatAdmin,
    );
    const spawner = await E(vats.spawner).buildSpawner(vatAdminSvc);
    // ...