How to engrave application name & version in esp32 partitions with arduino framework?

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I’ve been searching for months how to engrave the application name, version & date in the firmware image generated by an espressif32 project with framework = arduino only
(so no CMakeList.txt, neither any pio menu -t menuconfig), and have find very little (eg 12927: how-to-set-app-version-for-esp32).

RATIONAL: ESP_IDF projects record application name, version & date information near the beginning of the image in the esp_app_desc_t struct, which ita is retrievable on runtime with OTA API or system API, important when discerning remote devices running different OTA firmwares. It is a petty to lose the ability to utilize this infrastructure when using the arduino framework alone (instead of the dreaded arduino+espidf).

I would expect this capability to have been included by default by platformio - any help apreciated, i will try to bake something my self till then.

This the relevant part of my platformio.ini:

[env:esp32dev]
platform = https://github.com/platformio/platform-espressif32.git#develop
platform_packages = platformio/framework-arduinoespressif32 @ https://github.com/espressif/arduino-esp32.git
framework = arduino
board = esp32dev

(i’m following the very latest from both platforms & packages, above, bc i’m also experiment with puttingespidf into the mix, but is much harder to make it work, since the respective platformio projects need careful syncing, eg eg 14949/18], 14949/18, etc))

2

Eventually i baked and served this dinner myself…which maybe a useful capability for platformio project (any core devs around??)

You may review the extra_scripts = post:patchappinfos.py script in action.

  • it patches x4 fields(app-name, app-version,build-date & build-time) in the esp_app_desc_t struct at the begining of the generated image, and recalculates checksum and (optionally) sha256.
  • It is configurable, fetching app-name, app-version, & build-date from a cascade of sources.
  • it tries to mimic ESP_IDF behavior but with custom_option_xxx
    (the original build-flags are not only cumbersome vs custom-options, but are impossible to override,
    since they are hard-coded in the sdkconfig file of the pre-compiled underlying esp32 lib).
  • it is loosely tied with another extra-script progname.py that modifies the generated image filename,
    to include version from git-describe, etc - both scripts are good additions for platformio default behavior.

You may find more infos at the header of the the file, where extensive documentation is provided.

1 Like
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@ankostis I’d like to do the same as you, but it looks like the files you link to in your github repo have moved - did you find issues with your implementation?

4

@ankostis
Thanks for your solution!
I’m currently working on ESP Rainmaker and facing the same issue.
Have you, or somebody else any solution on how to implement the files you provided in your links, into any other project, except your own telelogger?
I need to change the Name and Version of my project in ESP Rainmaker, programmed over Arduino IDE.
Thanks in advance!

Florian

5

Sorry, have not worked on this for a year.
Can’t you chop it in small testable interactive steps and start porting them via ipython REPL?