Running the Host

The wasmCloud host runtime is an Elixir mix release that includes various scripts for running and managing an application. By running bin/wasmcloud_host, you’ll see a variety of commands and options:

./bin/wasmcloud_host
Usage: wasmcloud_host COMMAND [ARGS]

The known commands are:

    start          Starts the system
    start_iex      Starts the system with IEx attached
    daemon         Starts the system as a daemon
    daemon_iex     Starts the system as a daemon with IEx attached
    eval "EXPR"    Executes the given expression on a new, non-booted system
    rpc "EXPR"     Executes the given expression remotely on the running system
    remote         Connects to the running system via a remote shell
    restart        Restarts the running system via a remote command
    stop           Stops the running system via a remote command
    pid            Prints the operating system PID of the running system via a remote command
    version        Prints the release name and version to be booted

There are a variety of commands and options to get used to here, we generally only focus on the commands that manage starting, stopping, and debugging a wasmCloud application.

To start the host running in the current terminal, which is recommended to easily view logs, you can use start
```
bin/wasmcloud_host start
```
Alternately, you can start it in the background as a daemon with daemon
```
bin/wasmcloud_host daemon
```
and stop it with
```
bin/wasmcloud_host stop
```
or restart it with
```
bin/wasmcloud_host restart
```
If you choose this option, host logs will be located under tmp/log and can be viewed with:
```
tail tmp/log/erlang.log.1
```
If you’re already familiar with Elixir and iex, Elixir’s interactive shell, and want to dive into the host’s internals, execute Elixir statements, and set breakpoints, start the host including an interactive console with:
```
bin/wasmcloud_host start_iex
```