Is initializer no longer recommended in the latest implementation of OpenZeppelin Contracts?

[abcoathup]

Hi @shunp,

Welcome to the community

For upgradeable smart contracts you should use OpenZeppelin Contracts Ethereum Package.

from OpenZeppelin Contracts Ethereum Package: https://github.com/OpenZeppelin/openzeppelin-contracts-ethereum-package#differences-with-openzeppelin-contracts

This package contains the same contracts as the vanilla OpenZeppelin Contracts, but modified for use with upgradeable contracts. The main difference is that all contracts in this package are potentially upgradeable : you will notice that no contracts have constructors defined, but use initializer functions instead. Also, this package is set up as an Ethereum package, and provides a small set of pre-deployed logic contracts that can be used directly via the OpenZeppelin SDK, without needing to deploy them again.

All contracts have an UpgradeSafe suffix to avoid confusion with their counterparts in OpenZeppelin Contracts. For example, ERC20 becomes ERC20UpgradeSafe .

All in all, you should use this package instead of @openzeppelin/contracts if you are creating upgradeable contracts .

I created an example of using Ownable in an upgradeable contract to a recent question:

How to use Ownable with upgradeable contract?

Hi @dportabella, To use Ownable in an upgradeable contract we need to do the following: Import OwnableUpgradeSafe as contracts in OpenZeppelin Contracts Ethereum Package have an UpgradeSafe suffix to avoid confusion with their counterparts in OpenZeppelin Contracts. Create an initialize function to initialize the contract and use the initializer modifier from Initializable to ensure that it is only called once. An upgradeable version of Box.sol (from: https://docs.openzeppelin.com/learn/deve…

I also recommend looking at Role-Based Access Control for more finely grained access control.