A way to call evm_setNextBlockTimestamp directly from within solidity would be really useful

[JasoonS]

Firstly, I'm sure there are a whole bunch of complications and considerations here.

Using hardhat/truffle etc it is very common to manipulate time on ganache/hardhat/anvil in scripts, but there isn't a clean way to do this in solidity scripts with forge.

Maybe a library of common FFI functions is the approach to go?

We have already implemented the evm_setNextBlockTimestamp method that uses an ffi, but would like to know if there are plans or thoughts around this.

Here is our little hack:

library FFIHelpers {
  function setNextTimestampAnvil(Vm vm, uint32 timestamp) public {
    // example call:
    // $ cast rpc --rpc-url 'http://localhost:8545' evm_setNextBlockTimestamp '2000002342'
    string[] memory inputs = new string[](6);
    inputs[0] = "cast";
    inputs[1] = "rpc";
    inputs[2] = "--rpc-url";
    inputs[3] = "http://localhost:8545";
    inputs[4] = "evm_setNextBlockTimestamp";
    inputs[5] = vm.toString(timestamp);

    vm.ffi(inputs);
  }

  function executeCmdString(Vm vm, string memory cmd) external {
    string[] memory input = new string[](1);
    input[0] = cmd;

    vm.ffi(input);
  }
}

[JasoonS]

The issue with using an ffi function like this is that it doesn't work well with a broadcast since the broadcast happens after the creation of the transacitons (and the execution of the ffi).