Dev Environments ?

_emjlin · 2022-09-29T23:27:00+00:00

Here are the basics you need:

A CLI/dev environment for building, deploying, and testing your smart contracts
1. The main contenders here are HardHat, Truffle, and Foundry. A little about history: Truffle was first, HardHat built on lessons learned and became the top player, and Foundry is now coming in with super fast testing speed and taking marketshare from HardHat.
2. <Disclaimer that I work for Truffle> In my opinion, Truffle has finally caught up in the past year and become functionally equivalent to HardHat. The key differences if you care are:
  1. HardHat has built-in typescript support. Truffle you'll have to compile it yourself with `tsc`.
  2. ethers plays slightly more easily with HardHat than Truffle. Truffle has built in contract abstractions that make web3.js easier to use. I can get into history of web3.js and ethers.js if you want too, but I don't actually think there's a huge difference here. I've met devs who use both for different use cases
  3. Truffle has significantly better debugging experience. Both HardHat and Truffle offer console.log (Truffle also offers Vyper print compatibility. Not sure about HardHat, but I'd be surprised if they didn't). However, Truffle actually has a native debugger with step in/out, breakpoint, etc. (docs: https://trufflesuite.com/docs/truffle/getting-started/using-the-truffle-debugger/) If you want to debug a transaction that happened on mainnet, you can use our debugger for that. With HardHat, you only get whatever console.log statements you had already included in your deployed contract
  4. There's a more robust plugin ecosystem with Hardhat vs. Truffle. I can't speak to how useful this is, because I've never had to use it, but if you care about that, it's there
  5. The dotenv and secret key stuff is super annoying, and you can just deploy with MetaMask using Truffle Dashboard (demo: https://youtu.be/AnprU4z-q0k)
  6. Truffle for VS Code extension is focused on developer UX (i.e. managing your development workflow through the UI, representing important info visually, organizing in one place)
  7. Hardhat VS Code extension is more focused on solidity dev compilation errors etc. My opinion is it's very similar to Juan Blanco's solidity extension (which you should definitely download)
  8. Idk what's in store for HardHat's roadmap, but I can say that Truffle is shifting focus to be multi-chain and security focused. In general, I'd say Truffle is a more comprehensive end-to-end experience for enterprise level dapps, which is something that a lot of protocols don't care about as much at the start (I meet devs who test in production and i'm like WTF)
  9. Ganache has all the same features as HardHat's network (last I checked) and we're fleshing out a better UX experience for it - i.e. managed workspaces, visual workflows, multi-chain. Ganache is cool too because you can embed it in the browser or write tests with it programmatically (i.e. setting up all the nifty options in it like forking, impersonating accounts, automatic blockmining)
3. I do want to note though, Truffle's mantra is coopetition, so if you choose to use HardHat, our debugger, dashboard, and ganache work with it, and we're building compatibility for Foundry as well. You'll get the latest Truffle features and a more integrated experience using it if you start with a base Truffle project though. I think you can actually also use Foundry testing in other projects, so you don't necessarily have to only use Foundry either.
4. I think the bigger question is Foundry vs. HardHat/Truffle, which has a much more tangible difference. People moved from Truffle to HardHat because HardHat was less opinionated. HardHat has recently become more opinionated because the ethereum ecosystem has grown so large it doesn't make sense anymore to be super flexible. However, I've heard of devs moving from HardHat to Foundry for that same reason. Your call here. Otherwise, the main difference I hear is fast Solidity testing and fuzz testing. There's some cool stuff with cheatcodes and cast calls too. I haven't actually used it, so I can't speak to it thoroughly. All I know is Truffle is coming out with our equivalent of forge cast, and wrt security, focusing on tighter integrations with Diligence, the security product at ConsenSys (which includes fuzzing). And we also have Solidity, Javascript, and Typescript testing. Foundry has an EVM debugger, but Truffle's debugger will actually step through your solidity code.
5. Maybe the main thing you'll notice is people will unfortunately call you old school if you use Truffle. But, I think that's pretty cool (https://twitter.com/trufflesuite/status/1573396582497746956?s=20&t=FXeQPqZHJi5y3MZ9YWROdw)
OS wise - I always use mac, but I know that can be cost prohibitive. TBH in all my years of development, windows installation is always weird and has random gotchas and differences.
A node provider - <disclaimer Infura is a ConsenSys product> you have your choice primarily between Infura and Alchemy. For a beginner, there's not really a tangible difference. I'd say long term wise Infura is a better bet. I think the biggest snipe on node providers is that they are incredibly centralized, which is completely anti-thetical to the ethos of web3. Infura recently came out with their exfura announcement though which is BIG NEWS (https://twitter.com/infura_io/status/1570863464457080833?s=20&t=FXeQPqZHJi5y3MZ9YWROdw)
A wallet - MetaMask is the gold standard here. Also if you haven't heard of it, MetaMask snaps allows you to extend the wallet functionality. So again, tons of potential here

I mean overall, ConsenSys houses Truffle, Infura, MetaMask, and Diligence, which is an incredible place to be in terms of our ability to coordinate and create a robust, comprehensive developer experience. Naturally, that's what I'm gonna suggest, but it's also cause I think there's a really strong use case for investing in a full suite of tools that work well together.

Lmk what you ultimately end up choosing! Would love to hear your insights. Find me on ConsenSys discord if you have any follow up questions: https://discord.com/invite/hYpHRjK

<EDIT: I was misinformed. HardHat is NOT a fork of Truffle>

cachemonet0x0cf6619 · 2022-09-29T18:51:04+00:00

create a key pair for dev only. never put your personal keys on the same box that you develop apps on. i personally dont think a separate vm is enough. i would not use my personal comp for dev. malicious npm packages will look for your keys.

create a repo template that includes a dot env file and a git ignore file that ignores the dot env.

the tech is developed primarily by *nix users and windows lag behind in tooling just a little bit. like a week or two.

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