Install solc

Follow the official installation instructions.

You have a choice between installing it via package managers on your operating system, via npm, or compiling from source.

Note that if you install via npm you get solcjs instead of solc. Keep this in mind during the subsequent steps.

Create a solidity file

Write or copy any smart contract written in Solidity. You may use this contract.

Run solc

Assuming that your Solidity file is MyContract.sol, and you're in the same directory as it:

# Abstract Syntax Tree
solc --ast MyContract.sol

# Assembly (EVM op code)
solc --asm MyContract.sol

# Binary (EVM byte code)
solc --bin MyContract.sol

# Application Binary Interface
solc --abi MyContract.sol

Inspect the output

Look at the output for each of the above commands - it should appear directly in your terminal, and it shows various stages of the compiler in action.

• Abstract Syntax Tree (--ast): The compiler taken the input Solidity code and parsed and tokenised it.
• Assembly (--asm): The compiler has turned the AST into a series of EVM op codes.

• Binary (--bin): The compiler has turned the EVM op codes into EVM byte codes.

  • This isn't necessarily a separate stage in itself, as it really is a 1-to-1 mapping, and the assembly effectively functions as a "pretty print" variety of the byte code.
• Application Binary Interface (--abi): The compiler has turned the AST and the byte code into a JSON file describing each of the functions in a manner such that clients (such as web3.js) are able to invoke them.