`hardhat compile` randomly and quietly stops before compiling contracts

[sebastiendan]

Edit by @fvictorio: Hardhat 2.16.1 should this problem.

---

Version of Hardhat

2.14.0

What happened?

npx hardhat compile sometimes goes on with compiling contracts and sometimes (seems totally random) silently stops at the Downloading compiler ... step before any contracts are actually compiled. This issue is reproducible with no contracts already compiled and in docker.

Minimal reproduction steps

Here's a simple repository where you can observe the problem: repo.

This CI workflow run shows in the logs that the compilation didn't happen: log.

In addition, one can run the docker container in interactive mode and manually run the build command to see that, again, the command sometimes doesn't build nor throws an error but simply quietly stops without compiling (same output as the CI log above):

• Run the container in interactive mode: docker run --rm -it ghcr.io/sebastiendan/hardhat-compile-issue:main bash
• Run the compile command: npm run build
• Observe sometimes an actual compilation, sometimes a quiet stop in the command execution
  (run the above multiple times by exiting the container and re-running the two commands above)

Search terms

no compilation

[fuxingloh]

See:

• URL parser behaviour change in 18.16.0 nodejs/node#47555
• fix:amaZon -> amazon ada-url/ada#324 (comment)
• deps: update ada to 2.1.0 nodejs/node#47598

This is due to a regression in the latest node versions 18 and 20. Somewhere after "Downloading compiler list for platform" when trying to a compiler, it failed to download it and failed silently.

Try to use a node version other than the latest. I'm surprised the node team hasn't done a release yet since this is a widespread issue.

[stefiix92]

@fuxingloh thanks for pointing that out, I tried node 18.12.1 and the issue disappeared!

[sebastiendan]

@fuxingloh I can confirm it works with the 18.15.0-slim docker tag of node 👍

[fvictorio]

Wow, this is so weird. Thanks everyone for the info.

I still don't quite understand why and when this happens, but it's good to know that changing the version of node fixes the issue.

@sebastiendan I'm going to edit your issue so this information shows up first for people landing here.

[jubeira]

FWIW, Github actions is currently using 18.16.0 in Ubuntu 20 / 22 (latest) if the Node version is specified just as 18: actions/runner-images@af6dd20.

Specifying a different minor version (e.g node-version: 18.15) indeed solves the problem.