Publish

Subcommands that publish a Move package to a network. All of them accept the shared package options and shared transaction options; only the command-specific flags are listed below.

Picking a publication pattern

Two patterns are supported side by side; pick based on how you want the package’s address to behave:

Account publishing (publish / deploy): the modules live at the signer’s account address. Simplest pattern. Upgrades happen by re-publishing from the same account. The signer owns upgrade authority and can’t transfer it.
Code-object publishing (deploy-object / upgrade-object): the modules live at a separate, derived object address. Upgrade authority is held in a code object and can be transferred. Use this when modules need an address independent of any single account.

For code review and reproducibility, verify-package checks that on-chain bytecode matches a local source tree.

`aptos move publish` (alias: `deploy`)

Publish a package to the signer’s account.

aptos move publish --profile devnet
aptos move publish --named-addresses example=0x42 --included-artifacts sparse

Flag	Meaning
`--included-artifacts <none\|sparse\|all>`	What to embed in the on-chain package metadata (drives gas cost). Default `sparse`.
`--override-size-check`	Skip the local size pre-check. Doesn’t bypass on-chain size limits.
`--chunked-publish`	Publish in chunks via the `large_packages` framework module. Use for packages exceeding the single-transaction size limit.
`--chunk-size <BYTES>`	Override chunk size for chunked publishing.

Re-publishing this command upgrades the package in place, subject to the package upgrade rules.

`aptos move deploy-object`

Publish the package as a code object at a freshly derived object address. The chosen named address (passed by --address-name) is auto-bound to that object’s address before compile.

aptos move deploy-object \
  --address-name example \
  --profile devnet

Flag	Meaning
`--address-name <NAME>`	The named address in `Move.toml` whose binding will be set to the new object’s address.
`--included-artifacts`, `--override-size-check`, `--chunked-publish`, `--chunk-size`	Same as `publish`.

Upgrade a package previously published with deploy-object. The original --address-name is rebound to the existing object address (passed via --object-address) so the rebuild produces the same module ids. The new bytecode must satisfy the package upgrade rules against the version currently on-chain.

aptos move upgrade-object \
  --address-name example \
  --object-address 0xABC...123 \
  --profile devnet

Flag	Meaning
`--address-name <NAME>`	Same named address used at deploy time.
`--object-address <ADDR>`	Address of the existing code object.
`--included-artifacts`, `--override-size-check`, `--chunked-publish`, `--chunk-size`	Same as `publish`.

`aptos move verify-package`

Build the package locally and verify that the on-chain copy matches.

aptos move verify-package --account 0xABC...123

Flag	Meaning
`--account <ADDR>`	Address of the on-chain package to verify against.
`--included-artifacts <none\|sparse\|all>`	Match what was used at publish time.

A package published with upgrade_policy = "arbitrary" cannot be verified — its content can change at any time, so the verifier refuses to depend on it.

`aptos move build-publish-payload`

Compile the package and write a serialized publish-transaction payload to a JSON file. Used for offline signing, governance proposals, and chunked-publish workflows.

aptos move build-publish-payload \
  --json-output-file payload.json \
  --included-artifacts sparse

Flag	Meaning
`--json-output-file <PATH>`	Where to write the payload JSON.
Plus all `publish` flags.

The resulting JSON can be submitted later with aptos governance or signed offline.

`aptos move clear-staging-area`

Remove the staging-area resource left on-chain by an aborted chunked publish. Run this when a --chunked-publish flow fails partway and you want to start over.

aptos move clear-staging-area --profile devnet

No command-specific flags beyond the transaction options.

The Move on Aptos Book