Integration with hardhat does not work on windows

[Minh-Trng]

Environment information

• brownie Version: 1.18.1
• ganache-cli Version: 7.0.2
• solc Version: 1.1.1
• Python Version: 3.9.5
• OS: win

What was wrong?

I tried to replace ganache with hardhat in order to be able to use the console.log functionality within smart contracts. After failing to integrate it in an existing project I made a new project with a new venv and only ran the following commands mentioned in the docs to get it up and running:

1. pip install eth-brownie
2. npm install --save-dev hardhat
3. brownie console --network hardhat

Same as in the existing project the last command failed with the following error output:

Launching 'npx hardhat node --port 8545'...
File "c:\users\minht\documents\pythonprojects\hardhatwithbrownie\venv\lib\site-packages\brownie_cli_main.py", line 64, in main
importlib.import_module(f"brownie.cli.{cmd}").main()
File "c:\users\minht\documents\pythonprojects\hardhatwithbrownie\venv\lib\site-packages\brownie_cli\console.py", line 58, in main
network.connect(CONFIG.argv["network"])
File "c:\users\minht\documents\pythonprojects\hardhatwithbrownie\venv\lib\site-packages\brownie\network\main.py", line 50, in connect
rpc.launch(active["cmd"], **active["cmd_settings"])
File "c:\users\minht\documents\pythonprojects\hardhatwithbrownie\venv\lib\site-packages\brownie\network\rpc_init.py", line 75, in launch
self.process = self.backend.launch(cmd, **kwargs)
File "c:\users\minht\documents\pythonprojects\hardhatwithbrownie\venv\lib\site-packages\brownie\network\rpc\hardhat.py", line 74, in launch
return psutil.Popen(cmd_list, stdin=DEVNULL, stdout=out, stderr=out)
File "c:\users\minht\documents\pythonprojects\hardhatwithbrownie\venv\lib\site-packages\psutil_init_.py", line 1319, in init
self.__subproc = subprocess.Popen(*args, **kwargs)
File "C:\Users\minht\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python39\lib\subprocess.py", line 951, in init
self._execute_child(args, executable, preexec_fn, close_fds,
File "C:\Users\minht\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python39\lib\subprocess.py", line 1420, in _execute_child
hp, ht, pid, tid = winapi.CreateProcess(executable, args,
FileNotFoundError: [WinError 2] The system cannot find the file specified

[Minh-Trng]

found the problem: in hardhat.py the following lines were commented out:

def launch(cmd: str, **kwargs: Dict) -> None:
    """Launches the RPC client.
    Args:
        cmd: command string to execute as subprocess"""
    # if sys.platform == "win32" and not cmd.split(" ")[0].endswith(".cmd"):
    #     if " " in cmd:
    #         cmd = cmd.replace(" ", ".cmd ", 1)
    #     else:
    #         cmd += ".cmd"

those are necessary to turn "npx hardhat node ..." into "npx.cmd hardhat node ..." which the winapi is able to resolve.