compiling-circuits.md

description
This tutorial guide you through the process of writing your first program using the main features of circom: signals, variables, templates, components, and arrays.

Compiling our circuit

Once you have the compiler installed you can see the available options as follows:

circom --help

   Circom Compiler 2.0
   IDEN3
   Compiler for the Circom programming language

   USAGE:
      circom [FLAGS] [OPTIONS] [input]

   FLAGS:
      -h, --help       Prints help information
         --inspect    Does an additional check over the constraints produced
         --O0         No simplification is applied
      -c, --c          Compiles the circuit to c
         --json       outputs the constraints in json format
         --r1cs       outputs the constraints in r1cs format
         --sym        outputs witness in sym format
         --wasm       Compiles the circuit to wasm
         --wat        Compiles the circuit to wat
         --O1         Only applies var to var and var to constant simplification
      -V, --version    Prints version information

   OPTIONS:
         --O2 <full_simplification>    Full constraint simplification [default: full]
      -o, --output <output>             Path to the directory where the output will be written [default: .]

   ARGS:
      <input>    Path to a circuit with a main component [default: ./circuit.circom]

We created a template called Multiplier2 in Writing our first circuit. However, to actually create a circuit, we have to create an instance of this template. To do so, create a file with the following content:

pragma circom 2.0.0;

template Multiplier2() {
    signal input a;
    signal input b;
    signal output c;
    c <== a*b;
 }

 component main = Multiplier2();

After we write our arithmetic circuit using circom, we should save it in a file with the .circom extension. Remember that you can create your own circuits or use the templates from our library of circuits circomlib.

In our example, we create a file called multiplier2.circom. Now is time to compile the circuit to get a system of arithmetic equations representing it. As a result of the compilation we will also obtain programs to compute the witness. We can compile the circuit with the following command:

circom multiplier2.circom --r1cs --wasm --sym --c

With these options we generate three types of files:

• --r1cs: it generates the file multiplier2.r1cs that contains the R1CS constraint system of the circuit in binary format.
• --wasm: it generates the directory multiplier2_js that contains the Wasm code (multiplier2.wasm) and other files needed to generate the witness.
• --sym : it generates the file multiplier2.sym , a symbols file required for debugging or for printing the constraint system in an annotated mode.
• --c : it generates the directory multiplier2_cpp that contains several files (multiplier2.cpp, multiplier2.dat, and other common files for every compiled program like main.cpp, MakeFile, etc) needed to compile the C code to generate the witness.

We can use the option -o to specify the directory where these files are created.

Since version 2.0.8, we can use the option -l to indicate the directory where the directive include should look for the circuits indicated.