typechain ethers-v5 inclusion of hardhat-ethers

[wighawag]

In the newest version of typechain, typechain ethers-5 target include types for the plugin hardhat-ethers

This pose problem for plugin that are alternative to hardhat-ethers like hardhat-deploy-ethers which have different function signature, but use the same hre.ethers object

An option to at least disable hardhat-ethers type generation would be good. AFter all the ethers v5 target should focus on ethers itself.

An alternative would be to create a specific hardhat ethers target

[krzkaczor]

In the newest version of typechain, typechain ethers-5 target include types for the plugin hardhat-ethers

What do you mean exactly? What kind of types for the plugin hardhat-ethers do you have in mind? HH specific stuff should be generated only if hardhat is detected.

[wighawag]

I have my own hardhat plugin that is an alternative to hardhat-ethers but have different types : https://github.com/wighawag/hardhat-deploy-ethers/

[krzkaczor]

@wighawag oh, I get it now. So, I thought in the past about extracting hardhat stuff from ethers target but I wanted to optimize for the most common usecase and making it as easy as possible for standard users.

An option to at least disable hardhat-ethers type generation would be good. AFter all the ethers v5 target should focus on ethers itself.

I would suggest not using hardhat integration then but rather use CLI directly. We detect harhdat by checking environment like:

this.cfg.flags.environment === 'hardhat'

If you don't set it you will get standard ethers types. Also creating your own plugin makes total sense here (which can use standard ethers plugin for most type generation I think).

[wighawag]

The issue is that I need to tell existing user that already use typechain hardhat plugin to remove it and replace it with something else. I could create my own typechain plugin but would be eaiser if I could extend the ethers-v5 target rather than forking it with a different hardhat handling..

Also the hardhat plugin system is designed around adding new types, so if hardhat-typechain keep forcing one way, other such plugin will have issues. This does not seem to be fitting with hardhat extensibility.

Would an option to disable hardhat not be a simple change ?

I currently do it to remain compatible : https://github.com/wighawag/hardhat-deploy-ethers/blob/a56433d7c1bdd687deea20bc55c8874b26ac147a/src/internal/index.ts#L16-L24

but that's a workarund

[krzkaczor]

What if we set environment to hardhat only if we detect that hardhat-ethers is installed? If I get it correctly your users shouldn't have this dep installed, right? Also exposing the option to force specific environment (non hardhat to avoid generation) in hardhat config should be useful.

[wighawag]

What if we set environment to hardhat only if we detect that hardhat-ethers is installed? If I get it correctly your users shouldn't have this dep installed, right?

the current version of hardhat-deploy-ethers is a fork, but I aim to make it an extension to hardhat-ethers and so hardhat-deplot-ethers users will have both installed, but the type will be still be affected by the hardhat-deploy-ethers plugin. hardhat allows this kind of type extension.

Also the current version of hardhat-deploy-ethers is often installed as an alias to @nomiclabs/hardhat-ethers to be compatible with other plugin that hardcode a dependency to @nomiclabs/hardhat-ethers

[haydenyoung]

As an outsider, I understand the issue results from the hardhat getContract* types being hardcoded; the hardcoded types are actually in typechain/ethers-v5, dist/congen/hardhat to be precise.

Because hardhat-deploy-ethers exposes new methods (in particular getContract()) and because typechain/ethers-v5 is hardcoding the ethers types, the getContract types are not available and, hence, typechain has no idea what getContract is returning (because the type definition never gets created).

Currently, the hardhat-deploy-ethers plugin deletes hardhat.d.ts which results in all of the getContract* functions having no type definitions.

Is there a way to create the types "on-the-fly" somehow, in order to take advantage of the extended getContract() function? Happy to help if I know I'm interpreting the problem correctly and can be given some guidance in how to potentially solve this issue.

[luisnaranjo733]

As an outsider, I understand the issue results from the hardhat getContract* types being hardcoded; the hardcoded types are actually in typechain/ethers-v5, dist/congen/hardhat to be precise.

Because hardhat-deploy-ethers exposes new methods (in particular getContract()) and because typechain/ethers-v5 is hardcoding the ethers types, the getContract types are not available and, hence, typechain has no idea what getContract is returning (because the type definition never gets created).

Currently, the hardhat-deploy-ethers plugin deletes hardhat.d.ts which results in all of the getContract* functions having no type definitions.

Is there a way to create the types "on-the-fly" somehow, in order to take advantage of the extended getContract() function? Happy to help if I know I'm interpreting the problem correctly and can be given some guidance in how to potentially solve this issue.

So in theory I think it's possible for hardhat-deploy to ship with Typescript module definition likes (*.d.ts) that could "brute force" overwrite the types but that's pretty messy

I think it would be better if typechain could offer a way to de-couple itself from the hardhat ethers plugin to support forked plugins (mainly hardhat-deploy). The need for this is growing as other template projects (such as scaffold-eth) now depend internally on hardhat-deploy (which is honestly just a better version that the built in HH plugin).

Unrelated question - are there plans for hardhat-deploy to get unforked with the official HH plugin at some point? Would make the need for fixing this in typechain a lot more clear and present.

One final random note - I'm working around this typechain issue in my hardhat-deploy project by explicitly setting the generic type per the suggestion here. It's a minor nuisance, but it's a bummer because Typechain is so cool and it's so close to just working for hardhat-deploy projects too

https://github.com/wighawag/hardhat-deploy-ethers/issues/23#issuecomment-1101040259

[krzkaczor]

I am more than happy to accept a PR that would decouple ethersjs target from hardhat stuff, and enable creation of hardhat-deploy-ethers target.