New Default: Latest Epoch for Contract Development

[tippenein]

To encourage staying up-to-date with contract development and ensure consistency between local testing and production deployments, we've introduced a new default for contract epoch settings.

What's Changed

When creating a new contract with clarinet contracts new <name>, you'll now get a contract configured with the 'latest' epoch by default:

Config.toml Example

[contracts.counter]
path = 'contracts/counter.clar'
clarity_version = 3
epoch = 'latest'

Why This Matters

Consistency with Mainnet: When you deploy a contract on Mainnet, it automatically uses the latest epoch. Now your local testing environment will match this behavior by default, reducing surprises during deployment.

Stay Current: Using the latest epoch ensures you're developing with the newest Clarity features and improvements.

Customization Options

You can still specify a particular epoch version if needed (e.g. epoch = 3.0)

Migration

Existing contracts: This change only affects newly created contracts. Your existing contracts will continue to use their current epoch settings.

Upgrading existing contracts: If you want to update existing contracts to use the latest epoch, simply change the epoch value in your Clarinet.toml file.