Truffle - a proper way to execute a chunk of code

Question

Let's say I have a complex operation to execute, for example deploying 6 contracts and calling functions to each one, passing addreses to few of them and executing some extra more functions. I can, of course, call each function manually to pass address and so on, but it takes time and might cause a mistake. So the best way, in theory, would be to have a chunk of code ready to go and executing it once and automatically do the operation.

It would be pretty simple to do it using migration or test, but somebody told me before:

No, this is not a good use of migrations. Migrations are about deploying the system to the network and one-time initialization steps

Adding a builder contract is impossible, because holding few contracts exceeds ethereum limits.

So should I use the Test feature for executing chunks of complex code of my contracts' environment? Even on the mainnet?

Answer 1

If your code doesn't fit the concept of the migration script, you can use truffle exec to execute a custom JS script within the truffle environment. See https://truffleframework.com/docs/truffle/reference/truffle-commands#exec

The script is required to have the following structure:

const SomeContract = artifacts.require("SomeContract");
...

module.exports = function(done) {
    // ...your custom code here ...

    // call this to signal truffle that your script is done
    done();
}

You can access the contracts in the same way like you do in migration/test scripts.