Install PIO on VSC (with online access) - giving access to users with no online privileges

PlatformIO IDE
1

Hello everyone,
I have installed VSC and PIO with full online access and admin privileges as a teacher and it is working fine (using Arduino).
Now I want to give other users (students) access to PIO (Arduino-Fkt) on the same PC (Win10) without WEB-access. It don’t works. Is there a way to share the fuctionality for all offline users so that they can work without Internet access (using a common folder/structure, container or something like that), in a common userprofile.

Some idea ?
tnx for support, Frank

2

What’s the error message?

Given that you’ve installed the PlatformIO core to one specific directory that every user can access and set the PLATFORMIO_CORE_DIR environment variable for every user, pointing to that directory, it should work.

Here is what I would try:

  1. Install Python globally for all users (https://www.python.org/downloads/)
  2. Install VSCode globally for all users (https://code.visualstudio.com/download)
  3. Create a new folder and give every user read/write permissions to it (e.g., C:\PIO)
  4. Globall set the env variable PLATFORMIO_CORE_DIR to C:\PIO
  5. Download and execute the PlatformIO core installer script (https://docs.platformio.org/en/latest/core/installation/methods/installer-script.html#local-download-macos-linux-windows)
  6. The script should install the PlatformIO core, packages and platforms to `C:\PIO now.
  7. Add shell commands via addition to the PATH global environment variable.
  8. Predownload the packages for the envrionment you need. For example, you’re working with an Arduino Uno (Atmel AVR platform), you can e.g. pio pkg install -g -p atmelavr to install that platform. This should fill up the C:\PIO\packages and C:\PIO\platforms folders.
  9. Install the PlatformIO VSCode extension in VSCode
  10. Create a new project for your target microcontroller and use the “build” and “upload” project tasks to trigger the installation of the toolchain and uploader tools.
  11. Download any needed libraries. This can happen e.g. globally (pio pkg install -g -l <library>)
  12. Now internet access should not be needed anymore.

See docs as needed.