hardhat-deploy in a nutshell

Before going into the details, here is a very simple summary of the basic feature of hardhat-deploy.

hardhat-deploy allows you to write deploy scripts in the deploy folder. Each of these files that look as follows will be executed in turn when you execute the following task: hardhat --network <environmentName> deploy

Note that while hardhat call "network "the environment on which the contract will be deployed, multiple network can point to the same chain. We thus prefers to call them "environment"

// we import what we need from the #rocketh alias, see below for setup
import { deployScript, artifacts } from "#rocketh";

export default deployScript(
  // this allow us to define our deploy function which takes as first argument an environment object
  // This contains the function provided by the modules imported in 'rocketh.ts'
  // along with other built-in functions and the named accounts
  async ({ deployViaProxy, namedAccounts }) => {
    const { deployer, admin } = namedAccounts;

    const prefix = "proxy:";
    await deployViaProxy(
      "GreetingsRegistry",
      {
        account: deployer,
        artifact: artifacts.GreetingsRegistry,
        args: [prefix],
      },
      {
        owner: admin,
        linkedData: {
          prefix,
          admin,
        },
      }
    );
  },
  // execute takes as a second argument an options object where you can specify tags and dependencies
  { tags: ["GreetingsRegistry", "GreetingsRegistry_deploy"] }
);

Furthermore you can also ensure these scripts are executed in test too by calling await loadAndExecuteDeployments({provider: provider,}); in your tests.

Amd you can call these in hardhat test fixture to benefit from caching optimization.

This is a huge benefit for testing since you are not required to replicate the deployment procedure in your tests.

You can even group deploy scripts in different sub-folders and ensure they are executed in their logical order.

hardhat-deploy in a nutshell ​

hardhat-deploy in a nutshell