Using the "Publish" button of Solidity Online Compiler

Question

I've been using browser-solidity to test out my contract online. Usually I click "create" and then I can call all of my functions to test them.

However, I clicked the "publish" button, and I got a message saying "Metadata published successfully." What does this mean? I should note that when I did this, my MetaMask extension was connected to the public main net.

If I learn what's actually going on here, does that mean I can use browser-solidity to deploy my contract to a testnet for testing? I didn't get any address for where it was deployed or anything, just the message from above.

Thanks!

Answer 1

The publish button pushes the Metadata of the smart contract to swarm. This can be used to automatically verify the source code of a smart contract or to retrieve the web3 Json interface without having to copy-paste. It is not yet widely supported, though.

Concerning the second part of your question: Yes, you can deploy your contract to a testnet or even the public net. You have to change "environment" to "injected web3" and then it will just connect through metamask.