Specifying canister init arguments in dfx.json

[ocluf]

It would be nice if you could could specify the init arguments for the canister in your dfx.json.

For example in the current token deployment tutorial

You have to copy this command which you would probably put in a shell script.

dfx deploy --network ${NETWORK} custom-ledger --argument '(record {
  token_name = opt "'${TOKEN_NAME}'";
  token_symbol = opt "'${TOKEN_SYMBOL}'";
  minting_account = "'${MINT_ACC}'";
  initial_values = vec {};
  send_whitelist = vec {};
  archive_options = opt record {
    trigger_threshold = 2000;
    num_blocks_to_archive = 1000;
    controller_id = principal "'${ARCHIVE_CONTROLLER}'";
    cycles_for_archive_creation = opt 10_000_000_000_000
  }
})'

While this isn't a huge bother it would be a nice quality of life improvement if you could just specify these args in the dfx.json so all your canister configuration is one place. Then you also could use dfx deploy --all with different init arguments per canister.

It would also be nice if you could make a distinction between the arguments that are passed locally and when you deploy to the IC. In the token example you could for instance pass different minting principals for local en network deployment.

Perhaps this was hinted at in #2632 but it didn't mention dfx.json so I created a new discussion.

[ericswanson-dfinity]

This is implemented in #3571 for release in dfx 0.17.0