Installation

This page lists what Carbon 2.0 needs, which crates to add for the indexer you're building, and how to run the Carbon CLI. For a guided first project, follow the quickstart instead.

Requirements#

Check your toolchain:

rustc --version

rustc 1.99.0 (b940084d7 2026-09-28)

If it's older than 1.96.1, run rustup update stable.

Keep one Carbon version and one Solana cohort#

All carbon-* crates in a project must be version 2.0.0. Don't mix Carbon 2 crates with Carbon 1 decoders or datasources: Cargo builds both versions of carbon-core, and their types don't match. The same goes for Solana crates you depend on directly: pick versions from the Agave 4.2 cohort so that one version of solana-pubkey, solana-account and the other type crates ends up in your build.

When you add a Solana crate yourself, use the version Carbon uses:

Add Carbon to a project#

Every indexer needs carbon-core, at least one datasource, the decoders for the programs you read, and an async runtime. A metrics exporter is optional but recommended.

cargo add carbon-core@2.0.0
cargo add carbon-rpc-transaction-crawler-datasource@2.0.0
cargo add carbon-meteora-dlmm-decoder@2.0.0
cargo add carbon-log-metrics@2.0.0
cargo add tokio --features full
cargo add env_logger log

[dependencies]
carbon-core = "2.0.0"
carbon-log-metrics = "2.0.0"
carbon-meteora-dlmm-decoder = "2.0.0"
carbon-rpc-transaction-crawler-datasource = "2.0.0"
env_logger = "0.11.11"
log = "0.4.35"
tokio = { version = "1.54.1", features = ["full"] }

Replace the datasource and decoder with the ones you need. env_logger and log aren't required, but Carbon reports datasource and processor errors through the log crate, so install a logger to see them.

Which crates you need#

The datasource index compares datasources in detail.

carbon-core feature flags#

cargo add carbon-core@2.0.0 --features postgres,graphql

The feature flag reference covers every crate.

Decoder feature flags#

Every published decoder crate has the same features, all off by default:

cargo add carbon-meteora-dlmm-decoder@2.0.0 --features serde

Decoders you generate with the CLI get the same features, controlled by --with-postgres and --with-graphql (both on by default) and --with-serde. They also get a base58 feature when you pass --with-base58 true; it turns on serde and serializes Pubkey fields as base58 strings.

Install and run the CLI#

The Carbon CLI, @sevenlabs-hq/carbon-cli, generates decoder crates from Anchor or Codama IDLs (parse) and scaffolds complete indexer projects (scaffold). It needs Node.js 20.18.0 or newer. Run it without installing:

npx @sevenlabs-hq/carbon-cli@2.0.0 --version

pnpm dlx @sevenlabs-hq/carbon-cli@2.0.0 --version

bunx @sevenlabs-hq/carbon-cli@2.0.0 --version

yarn dlx @sevenlabs-hq/carbon-cli@2.0.0 --version

2.0.0

To install it globally instead:

npm install -g @sevenlabs-hq/carbon-cli@2.0.0
carbon-cli --version

The package installs two equivalent commands, carbon-cli and carbon. Run carbon-cli parse or carbon-cli scaffold without options to be prompted for each one. CLI 2.0.0 generates code that depends on Carbon 2.0.0 crates. See the CLI reference for every command and flag.

Verify the install#

Put this program in src/main.rs. A pipeline with no datasources starts and returns straight away, so it checks that Carbon compiles and runs without touching the network.

use carbon_core::{error::CarbonResult, pipeline::Pipeline};

#[tokio::main]
async fn main() -> CarbonResult<()> {
    // A pipeline with no datasources returns as soon as it starts.
    Pipeline::builder().build()?.run().await?;
    println!("carbon-core is installed and the pipeline runs");
    Ok(())
}

cargo run

carbon-core is installed and the pipeline runs

Then check that only one version of carbon-core is in your build:

cargo tree -i carbon-core --depth 1

carbon-core v2.0.0
├── carbon-log-metrics v2.0.0
├── carbon-meteora-dlmm-decoder v2.0.0
├── carbon-rpc-transaction-crawler-datasource v2.0.0
└── carbon-quickstart v0.1.0 (/home/you/carbon-quickstart)

If Cargo reports that there are multiple carbon-core packages, one of your carbon-* dependencies isn't 2.0.0. Set every one to 2.0.0 and run cargo update.

Next steps#