Placebo 🧪

This is a minimal Anchor program used for testing CI pipelines and validator harnesses. It is intentionally trivial: the contract does nothing, but the structure is complete and real. The goal is to test the testing system itself, not any particular Solana logic.

Placebo is developed in tandem with Beargrease, a transparent Docker-based Solana test harness with full CI support. This repository is intended to serve as both a reference implementation and a live demo target for Beargrease workflows.

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📦 Dependencies

You will need:

• Solana CLI ≥ 1.18.0
• Anchor CLI ≥ 0.31.1
• Docker and Docker Compose
• Node.js ≥ 18 with TypeScript and Mocha
• Beargrease v1.1.0+

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🧪 Running Tests Locally

To test locally using Beargrease:

# Step into the project directory
cd placebo

# Create a test wallet
../beargrease/scripts/create-test-wallet.sh

# Run the test harness
../beargrease/scripts/run-tests.sh

This will:

• Start a Solana test validator in Docker
• Deploy the placebo program
• Patch the program ID dynamically
• Run Mocha tests in ESM mode
• Shut down and clean up

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🤖 CI Mode: GitHub Actions

Placebo supports Beargrease Directory Checkout Mode as of v1.1.0. This mode avoids requiring Beargrease to be installed as a GitHub Action and instead runs directly from a local checkout of the Beargrease repo.

To use this:

# .github/workflows/ci.yml
name: ☣️ Placebo CI

on:
  push:
    branches: [main]
  pull_request:
    branches: [main]

jobs:
  test:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4

      - name: 📁 Checkout Beargrease test harness
        uses: actions/checkout@v4
        with:
          repository: rgmelvin/beargrease
          path: beargrease

      - name: 🧪 Run Beargrease Test Harness
        run: ./beargrease/scripts/run-tests.sh

This is the preferred approach for CI.

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🔬 Tests

The test file lives in tests/placebo.test.mts. It is written in modern ESM TypeScript with Mocha:

• Loads the IDL from target/idl/placebo.json
• Reads the deployed program ID from Anchor.toml
• Uses ANCHOR_PROVIDER and ANCHOR_WALLET for context
• Confirms the program was deployed and reachable

You can extend this test to simulate your own program behaviors.

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🧹 Cleanup

To manually clean up after a test run:

docker compose down
rm -rf .wallet .beargrease

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📚 References

• Beargrease Documentation
• Anchor Docs
• Solana CLI

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MIT License · Cabrillo! Labs