What is it for?

This hardhat plugin adds a mechanism to deploy contracts to any network, keeping track of them and replicating the same environment for testing.

It also adds a mechanism to associate names to addresses, so test and deployment scripts can be reconfigured by simply changing the address a name points to, allowing different configurations per network. This also results in much clearer tests and deployment scripts (no more accounts[0] in your code).

This plugin contains a lot more features too, all geared toward a better developer experience :

• chain configuration export (via @rocketh/export) (listing deployed contracts' addresses and their abis (useful for web apps))
• library linking at the time of deployment.
• deterministic deployment across networks.
• support for specific deploy script per environment (L1 vs L2 for example)
• deployment dependency system (allowing you to only deploy what is needed).
• deployment retrying (by saving pending tx): so you can feel confident when making a deployment that you can always recover.
• deployments as test fixture via hardhat helpers
• contains helpers to read and execute transaction on deployed contract referring to them by name.
• save metadata of deployed contract so they can always be fully verified, via sourcify or etherscan.
• ability to submit contract source to etherscan and sourcify for verification at any time. (Because hardhat-deploy will save all the necessary info, it can be executed at any time.)
• support hardhat's fork feature so deployment can be accessed even when run through fork.
• declarative proxy deployment with ability to upgrade them transparently, only if code changes.
• this include support for openzeppelin transparent proxies
• diamond deployment with facets, allowing you to focus on what the new version will be. It will generate the diamondCut necessary to reach the new state.
• support HRC (Hot Contract Replacement) via special proxy mechanism and file watch setup