AST-importer fails at version 0.7.6 about solidity HOT 1 CLOSED

This is not a bug, on 0.7.x you just need different options to get an AST that --import-ast can handle. Use --combined-json ast,compact-format or better --ast-compact-json.

Historically the format of the AST we output changed a few times. The ones I'm aware of:

• --ast CLI option produces legacy non-JSON format, removed in 0.6.0
• --ast-json CLI option produces legacy non-compact JSON format, removed in 0.8.0
• --ast-compact-json CLI option produces compact JSON format that we support now.
• In Standard JSON we now only have ast, which is the compact format. We used to have legacyAST there too and off the top of my head I'm not sure which of the legacy formats it produced. legacyAST was removed from Standard JSON in 0.8.0 in any case.

--import-ast expects the compact format.

Now, the problem with --combined-json is that in 0.8.0 we changed its format:

• On 0.7.x --combined-json ast produced the non-compact format and --combined-json ast,compact-format produced the compact format.
• On 0.8.x --combined-json ast produces the compact format and compact-format was removed from --combined-json.

Solidity v0.8.0 Breaking Changes > Interface Changes mentions this but very vaguely and not in a way that would help anyone who was not already somewhat aware of what those options were doing. Other than that, I don't think we ever had the various formats, their differences and options properly documented. Unfortunately we can't amend docs for old versions. I also don't think this really has a place in the current docs, since it's more of a historical trivia.

from solidity.