INTRODUCTION
Web3 and Blockchain are new technologies that rely heavily on smart contracts and to run smart contract you need a development environment that can help to compile, test, debug and deploy ethereum software (Ethereum Nodes)
WHAT IS A DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENT?
A Development Environment is an environment to develop, test and deploy Smart contracts carefully and initialize contracts in a better and more secure way.
There are a handful of development environments that perform such operations but Hardhat and Truffle are among the best. Even though Hardhat and Truffle are way similar we will be considering some of the differences and similarities between the two.
So let's look at some of the features of Hardhat first.
Table of Content
- Hardhat - What is Hardhat?
- Key Features of Hardhat
- Truffle - What is Truffle?
- Key Feature of Truffle
- The Differences
- The Similarities
- Conclusion
HARDHAT : Hardhat dubs itself as the Ethereum development environment for professionals. It is an Ethereum based Development environment to build, develop, compile and deploy smart contracts created by the team at Nomic Foundation. It facilitates performing frequent tasks, such as running tests, automatically checking code for mistakes or interacting with a smart contract.
KEY FEATURES OF HARDHAT
Debugging contracts : (Supports Console.log)
Hardhat makes it a lot easy to debug your smart contract. You get solidity stack traces, can use console.log command and shows error messages when transaction fails which is very essential for developers to know where the application fails and how ro solve the error making the debugging process a lot easier.
Testing and Deploying Contracts (Pre-installed Ethereum local Testnet)
You can run solidity locally, easily deploy your contracts, run tests and debug Solidity code without dealing with live environments.
Hardhat comes with a pre-installed local ethereum network testnet. It makes it easier and possible to interact with smart contracts in testing directly without using a third party testing environment account and blockchain network like Ganache UI or Ganache CLI.
Plugins Ecosystem
Hardhat houses a range of Plugins and Libraries that enhance the functionality of hardhat and integrate your existing tools into a smooth workflow.
Community and Resources
Hardhat has an active and supportive community, but being the baby in the house previously has no much resources as compared to truffle. But with the speed of mass Developers adopting Hardhat there is now an avalanche of resources.
Usage and Flexibility
This is it, where Hardhat wears the crown for its ease of integration, flexible functionalities, allowing you to change anything you like and customizable design with little constraints.
It allows you to keep using your existing tools while enabling deeper interoperability between them and has all the utilities you need to address your project-specific needs.
Now let's look at some of the features of Truffle now
TRUFFLE : Truffle Suite as the Trufflesuite team puts it is a world class development environment, testing framework and asset pipeline for blockchain using the ethereum virtual machine crafted by ConsenSys Inc.
Truffle Suite has three components:
Truffle : It is a Development Environment, Testing Framework and Asset pipeline for Ethereum Blokchains.
Ganache : Ganache is a personal Ethereum Blockchain used to test smart contracts where you can deploy contracts, develop applications, run tests and perform other tasks without any cost.
Drizzle : Drizzle is a collection of libraries used to create easy and better front-end for Ethereum DApps.
KEY FEATURES OF TRUFFLE
Smart Contract Management Circle
Truffle takes care of managing your contract artifacts so you don't have to Includes support for custom deployments, library linking and complex Ethereum applications.
Automated Contract Testing
Another helpful feature of Truffle is that it supports automated contract testing. You can write automated tests for your contracts in both JavaScript and Solidity, and get your contracts developed quickly bringing your dapp development to the 21st century
Interactive Console Truffle uses an interactive console access to all your built contracts and all available Truffle commands to save time and talk to your contracts.
Debugging contracts Truffle Debugger is a command line tool integrated into the Truffle Framework which allows smart contract transactions to be debugged using the smart contract code and transaction artifacts.
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN HARDHAT AND TRUFFLE
Hardhat comes with an integrated local Ethereum network to run and deploy smart contract.
Truffle doesn't have an integrated local network. You need Ganache,a tool to set up your own local Ethereum blockchain that you can use to deploy and test your smart contracts.
Hardhat supports Typescript.
Truffle does not support Typescript or does with robust configurations.
Hardhat houses Plugins ecosystem with customizable features depending on project-specific needs making it much more flexible.
Truffle is less flexible because it does not support many plugins as it has its own fixed way of doing things.
Hardhat makes debugging solidity codes easier with the console.log command that displays log messages in the terminal.
Truffle we write our own events and deal with it to test our contracts.
Hardhat gives stack traces which makes it possible to inspect what happened in your contract if you change it or where an application fails and how to solve this problem.
Truffle just gives the error message instead of actual stack traces.
Hardhat uses the Ethers.js library to interact with smart contracts as default, whereas
Truffle uses the Web3.js library to interact with smart contracts as default.
#NOTE Both can use both libraries interchangeably with some configurations.
SIMILARITIES BETWEEN HARDHAT AND TRUFFLE
Hardhat and Truffle do the same thing for you; it helps you to develop, test and deploy the smart contracts.
Hardhat and Truffle provide Javascript and Solidity based development frameworks.
Hardhat and Truffle use the Ethereum network to develop, test and deploy the smart contracts.
Hardhat and Truffle have a massive community and resources.
CONCLUSION
That's it guys!
I've tried to cover the basics of Hardhat and Truffle and lay out the differences and similarities between them.. It's up to you to choose which development environment you want to work with.
I'm Sunington, you can connect with me on Twitter. Expect more indepth research and resources on Web3, Smart Contracts, and Blockchain in my subsequent Blog posts.
Until we meet again