How to fix Error: The trait BorshSerialize is not implemented for Pubkey

Question

I am using OSX with the following packages:

• Anchor CLI 0.28.0
• Rust 1.70.0
• Solana CLI 1.16.1

To flush cache and ensure my environment is clean I have run:

anchor clean && cargo update

These are my project dependencies:

[dependencies]
anchor-lang = { version = "0.28.0", features = ["init-if-needed"] }
anchor-spl = { version = "0.28.0", features = ["metadata"] }
solana-program = "1.14.19"
mpl-token-metadata = { version = "1.12.0", features = ["no-entrypoint"] }

But when I run anchor build, it throws multiple errors like the following:

error[E0277]: the trait bound `Pubkey: BorshSerialize` is not satisfied
  --> src/idl.rs:35:10
   |
35 | #[derive(AnchorSerialize, AnchorDeserialize)]
   |          ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ the trait `BorshSerialize` is not implemented for `Pubkey`
   |
   = help: the following other types implement trait `BorshSerialize`:
             &T
             ()
             (T0, T1)
             (T0, T1, T2)
             (T0, T1, T2, T3)
             (T0, T1, T2, T3, T4)
             (T0, T1, T2, T3, T4, T5)
             (T0, T1, T2, T3, T4, T5, T6)
           and 81 others

This is the Cargo.lock file showing the anchor-lang installed dependencies:

[[package]]
name = "anchor-lang"
version = "0.28.0"
source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index"
checksum = "0d2d4b20100f1310a774aba3471ef268e5c4ba4d5c28c0bbe663c2658acbc414"
dependencies = [
 "anchor-attribute-access-control",
 "anchor-attribute-account",
 "anchor-attribute-constant",
 "anchor-attribute-error",
 "anchor-attribute-event",
 "anchor-attribute-program",
 "anchor-derive-accounts",
 "anchor-derive-space",
 "arrayref",
 "base64 0.13.1",
 "bincode",
 "borsh 0.10.3",
 "bytemuck",
 "getrandom 0.2.10",
 "solana-program",
 "thiserror",
]

Seems like anchor-lang is using a conflicting borsh version 0.10.3 when it should be using 0.9.3. Does anyone know a workaround to fix this issue?

Answer 1

This error is resulting from the latest solana-program and mpl-token-metadata crates being incompatible with each other due to different borsh versions.

The fix is simple, without making any changes to your Cargo.toml:

cargo update -p solana-zk-token-sdk --precise 1.14.19
cargo update -p [email protected] --precise 0.9.3

Seems like anchor-lang is using a conflicting borsh version 0.10.3 when it should be using 0.9.3

There is nothing conflicting there, you are able to use both 0.9 and 0.10 versions as well as 1.14 and 1.16 versions of Solana crates. Without that range specification, there would be no way of compiling crates such as mpl-token-metadata 1.12.0 which uses borsh 0.9.3 when the solana-program 1.16.0 crate uses borsh 0.10.3.

For a longer explanation see this comment.

Answer 2

For anyone else who'll be trying work on a native Solana program, here is a set-up that works...

My Solana cli suite solana-cli 1.16.4 (src:4ce8fe76; feat:2891131721, client:SolanaLabs)

Cargo.toml packages

cargo add solana-program@=1.14.19
cargo add [email protected]
cargo add [email protected]
cargo add [email protected] --features=no-entrypoint
cargo add [email protected] --features=no-entrypoint
cargo add [email protected] --features=no-entrypoint