Glossary

ABI
The JSON representation of the application binary interface. See the official specification for more information.
Address
A public identifier for an account on a particular chain
Bytecode

The set of EVM instructions as produced by a compiler. Unless otherwise specified this should be assumed to be hexadecimal encoded, representing a whole number of bytes, and prefixed with a '0x'.

Bytecode can either be linked or unlinked. (see Linking)

Unlinked Bytecode:
 

The hexadecimal representation of a contract’s EVM instructions that contains sections of code that requires linking for the contract to be functional.

The sections of code which are unlinked must be filled in with zero bytes.

Example: 0x606060405260e06000730000000000000000000000000000000000000000634d536f
Linked Bytecode:
 

The hexadecimal representation of a contract’s EVM instructions which has had all Link References replaced with the desired Link Values.

Example: 0x606060405260e06000736fe36000604051602001526040518160e060020a634d536f
Contract Instance

A contract instance a specific deployed version of a Contract Type.

All contract instances have an Address on some specific chain.

Contract Type

Refers to a specific contract in the package source. This term can be used to refer to an abstract contract, a normal contract, or a library. Two contracts are of the same contract type if they have the same bytecode.

Example:

contract Wallet {
    ...
}

A deployed instance of the Wallet contract would be of of type Wallet.

A location within a contract’s bytecode which needs to be linked. A link reference has the following properties.

offset:Defines the location within the bytecode where the link reference begins.
length:Defines the length of the reference.
name:(optional.) A string to identify the reference
A link value is the value which can be inserted in place of a Link Reference
Linking
The act of replacing Link References with Link Values within some Bytecode.
Package

Distribution of an application’s source or compiled bytecode along with metadata related to authorship, license, versioning, et al.

For brevity, the term Package is often used metonymously to mean Package Manifest.

Package Manifest
A machine-readable description of a package (See Package Specification for information about the format for package manifests.)