Buidler support

I’m opening this issue to continue our conversation from #115.

I tried running this reporter with Buidler, and got into these issues:

1. It requires web3, so it would only work in projects using buidler-web3. I think this is a reasonable requirement, and I haven’t checked yet how difficult it would be to make it more general.

2. It assumes that artifacts from truffle is available. I workarounded this by installing buidler-truffle5.

3. It only works if web3 supports sync calls. Those aren’t supported by Buidler, and I think they aren’t by web3 1.0. I saw this PR, so I commented out this check, but I’m getting this error now:

pato@pmbp:gas% npx buidler test --show-stack-traces
Compiling...
An unexpected error occurred: Cannot read property 'url' of undefined

TypeError: Cannot read property 'url' of undefined
    at Object.request (/private/tmp/gas/node_modules/eth-gas-reporter/sync.js:57:10)
    at Object.getLatestBlock (/private/tmp/gas/node_modules/eth-gas-reporter/sync.js:21:17)
    at Object.mapMethodsToContracts (/private/tmp/gas/node_modules/eth-gas-reporter/gasStats.js:353:22)
    at Runner.Gas.runner.on (/private/tmp/gas/node_modules/eth-gas-reporter/index.js:143:65)
    at emitNone (events.js:111:20)
    at Runner.emit (events.js:208:7)
    at start (/private/tmp/gas/node_modules/mocha/lib/runner.js:848:10)
    at Runner.run (/private/tmp/gas/node_modules/mocha/lib/runner.js:876:5)
    at Mocha.run (/private/tmp/gas/node_modules/mocha/lib/mocha.js:612:17)
    at Promise (/private/tmp/gas/node_modules/@nomiclabs/buidler/src/builtin-tasks/test.ts:51:13)
    at new Promise (<anonymous>)
    at SimpleTaskDefinition.config_env_1.internalTask.addOptionalVariadicPositionalParam.setAction [as action] (/private/tmp/gas/node_modules/@nomiclabs/buidler/src/builtin-tasks/test.ts:50:24)
    at <anonymous>
    at process._tickCallback (internal/process/next_tick.js:189:7)

It expects a connection field from web3. I have no idea what that is. Do you?

[alcuadrado]

@cgewecke here’s the sample project using ethers: https://github.com/alcuadrado/example-buidler-ethers

It has a super basic contract with a few tests, but it may be enough as a test case. Let me know if it’s not.

I also installed typescript in that project, to have it as an example of how to do it, and cause having autocomplete may help you as buidler-ethers is not that well documented yet.

the ‘deep reach’ is in lib/config.js for the moment.

If buidler-ethers is installed, you can do this with ethers.provider._buidlerProvider.provider.host. Or you can use ethereum.provider.host in any Buidler project.

[alcuadrado]

Do you mean the mocha process?

I think I mean the client. For example in truffle if you try to supply ganache as a provider directly to main process through truffle’s network configurations, web3 0.x’s sync calls freeze the execution thread. I believe sync-request would cause the same problem although it sounds like you’re anticipating this already with:

This is interesting. I restricted the provider’s config a little to prevent users from passing web3-provider-engine backed providers. I don’t think that is stable enough, and I don’t like that it works as a service (i.e. you need to start and stop it) without any clear reason. As Buidler also works as a library, there isn’t a single place to start/stop it.

Also, I have plans for an in-process provider, so not sure if the sync-request through HTTP would work in the future.

we don’t have a concept equivalent to migrations

Oh good. The only issue there is whether people consume pre-deployed contracts in their tests and want data about what those deployments cost. If not it doesn’t matter.

I see! I’ll try to avoid doing that. I guess it was an optimization, but it gets things really confusing. At least for tools developers.

I think this should be fairly easy once we got the above things working.

Agree. Have a clear idea of what needs to be configurable now - thanks so much for all your help here.

Let me know if you need help with anything else 😃