Support for Deno?

[sjmueller]

Deno is the next-gen version of nodejs, built specifically for TypeScript. Ethers.js is a modern TypeScript project that could fit very well with deno.

Here are some tools that can help:

• Denoify is a library that can aid in supporting deno with minimal changes to Ethers codebase
• Some services attempt to provide deno support automatically (Skypack: https://cdn.skypack.dev/ethers?dts JSPM: https://dev.jspm.io/ethers) but don't seem to work out of the box
• For reference, here's the corresponding deno issue on the Hardhat repo: Support for Deno? NomicFoundation/hardhat#1858

Currently within a deno project, using import { ethers } from "https://cdn.ethers.io/lib/ethers-5.4.6.esm.min.js"; enables the dependency to be added without error, but obviously deno supports a much richer dev experience when used with original source in pure TypeScript.

Are there any plans to support deno?

[ricmoo]

I had never heard of it before and would need to research it more before I can comment any further. Sounds interesting though. :)

[ricmoo]

I'm going to move this to discussions for now.

If anyone can give a quick overview of what is needed to make things Deno-happy, would be appreciated. Is it just a matter of a package.json key?

Basically, more info would be nice, and now that discussions exist, this seems like a better place to iron out the details. :)

[sunw31]

https://deno.land/[email protected]/node/dnt

dnt allows you to develop your Deno module mostly as-is and use a single Deno script to build, type check, and test an npm package in an output directory. Once built, you only need to npm publish the output directory to distribute it to Node.js users.

[dizthewize]

I'd also like to see ethers added as a module in Deno as well 👍🏾

[vorcigernix]

+1. I tried to do it myself using denoify, but the build structure is too complicated for this tool I guess. I'll keep digging.

[ricmoo]

Have you tried the v6 beta in Deno? It’s designed to have a much simpler build system.

[vorcigernix]

Oh, I meant ethers build process. Now it seems that what we actually miss most is a type definitions. As long as there are corresponding d.ts files, it should be easy to use cdn hosted library in deno, see https://deno.land/manual/typescript/types

[vorcigernix]

Sorry, now reading this again, I clearly misunderstood the question. What branch is best to play with? v6-beta-exports ?

[vorcigernix]

Okay, for the future reference, skypack solves this problem somehow (I guess with a little type definition hack I added). Export map is missing, but it does not seem to have an impact on anything. See https://github.com/vorcigernix/freshweb3kit for a reference.

[dd0sxx]

any update on this? I too would love to see ethers on Deno

[vorcigernix]

I have a newer repo with my portfolio here where I use a better way to include ethers in the Deno project. I honestly see a little reason to build native Deno version (except for better tooling, but that's on @ricmoo - as a user I am happy to use ESM module in Deno).

Edit: @sjmueller has a good point below, I actually never run into troubles in my simplistic projects.

[sjmueller]

We currently use ethers.js on deno via esm.sh and yes it works, so we are grateful. However, it could be way better as native deno, simply because diving into source code definitions (and understanding the relation to your codebase) would overall be so much more intuitive when viewing the original TypeScript source -- not the convoluted mess that is currently transpiled.

This matters most when something goes wrong, and you need to figure out where the problem lies.

Hoping we get native support for deno eventually -- would be amazing 🙏

[ricmoo]

What is required for native support? Is it just adding a key in the package.json ?I’m curious if v6 works in Deno better; the build process is much less convoluted. :)

In v6, pkg.exports are used, so ideally it should just be some key and path?

[talentlessguy]

Unfortunately Deno doesn't fully support source maps yet. I tried importing like this:

import { getDefaultProvider } from 'https://esm.sh/@ethersproject/[email protected]?sourcemap'

and ctrl-click led to a .d.ts file instead of .ts

[lirc571]

Using the new npm specifier feature in Deno works for me without any issues:

import { ethers } from "npm:ethers@^5.7";

[jflatow]

Doesn't seem to work with deno bundle though?

[TJKoury]

Unfortunately Deno is a fun tech toy for what Node could be in the future. For now, if you want to use Deno in production with all it's features, you'll have to stick to Denoland packages.

[lirc572]

I have never tried deno bundle but it seems to be deprecated as of today. There is deno_emit but it doesn't support npm specifier yet and no one seems to be actively working on it because the Deno team is advocating for "no build step"... 😞

[dogukanakkaya]

[ricmoo]

Any idea how to fix that? I made sure that v6 does nothing weird or outside the norm for TypeScript or anything funky with build scripts, so I don’t know any reason it shouldn’t “just work”… But I’ve never used Deno…

[dogukanakkaya]

I didn't dive deep but i tried to log out what the value of result is (.then was called on result variable in that file). First it logged my first constructor argument to factory.deploy(arg1, arg2, arg3) but the second console.log outputted undefined which should probably output my arg2 but it didn't.

[dogukanakkaya]

All right i figured out and looks like it was my bad. Somehow parameters were becoming undefined which was not happening when running the same code in AWS Lambda. I don't know if it was the running environment or the validation library in different environments. But not related with ethers