Error HH411: The library openzeppelin-solidity is not installed. Try installing it using npm (for old 0.5.0 solidity code)

Question

I have solidity project with files like

pragma solidity ^0.5.0;

import "openzeppelin-solidity/contracts/ownership/Ownable.sol";

When I try to compile, I get error on not installed library

npx hardhat compile                
Error HH411: The library openzeppelin-solidity, 
imported from contracts/....sol, is not installed. 
Try installing it using npm.

I have tried installing

npm install @openzeppelin/contracts

and v3.1.0 that is proper match for solidity v0.5.0

npm install @openzeppelin/[email protected]

But get the same error.

So what is this openzeppelin-solidity library, and how to install it?

Answer 1

Thanks to @zmy comment, pointing to https://www.npmjs.com/package/openzeppelin-solidity.

2.3.0 is earliest version on npm registry as "@openzeppelin/contracts"
https://www.npmjs.com/package/@openzeppelin/contracts
openzeppelin-solidity has older versions
https://www.npmjs.com/package/openzeppelin-solidity

So installation should be like

npm i [email protected]   

and version in range 2.1.0-2.5.1 (for solidity v0.5.0)

2.1.0 is first version to target solidity v0.5.0 https://github.com/OpenZeppelin/openzeppelin-contracts/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md#210-2019-01-04
3.1.0 is Last openzeppelin-contracts version to work with solidity v0.5.0 https://github.com/OpenZeppelin/openzeppelin-contracts/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md#320-2020-09-10
3.0.0 (2020-04-20) AccessControl: new contract for managing permissions in a system, replacement for Ownable.
so Ownable is not available since v3.0.0
https://github.com/OpenZeppelin/openzeppelin-contracts/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md#300-2020-04-20
Latest is v4.2.0 (2021-06-30), requires solidity 0.8.0 since v4.0

Answer 2

Your code is wrong. The correct code should look like this.

import "@openzeppelin/contracts/access/Ownable.sol";

There is no such library openZeppelin-solidity, The correct library is@openZeppelin/contracts

Answer 3

I coded the import by hand and typo'd it showing this error. Correcting the spelling made it work again as it was trying to find something that didn't exist.

Answer 4

For the Openzeppelin contract installed that with --force and it works fine.

npm install @openzeppelin/[email protected] --force

Also, there seems to be a versioning issue, for the latest Openzeppelin the version of solidity to be used is 0.8.20. it works for me this way