PlatformIO CLI and IDE Bundle for offline installation

FAQ
1

Hello,
I’ve started using PlatformIO recently and one of the things i perceived from day one is that, for every machine i download the CLI and IDE, it basically simply download everything and then install. This is pretty bad for archiving.
Also on some bad connections it takes a while to load.

Do you guys have any plans for launching a bundle version, for simply unzipping and running both CLI and IDE?

Thanks

2

You don’t need to install PlatformIO CLI separately. PlatformIO IDE has built-in PlatformIO CLI.

We can’t create the off-line version of PlatformIO IDE/CLI because we don’t know which platforms will be used later. What is more, we have ~3Gb of different pre-built packages for the different host OS ( Service End for Bintray, JCenter, GoCenter, and ChartCenter | JFrog ). I’m not sure that you want to have “off-line” installer with 3Gb size.

1 Like
3

I understand.
Maybe a basic version, which contain support for major platforms like Arduino and teensy?

By the way, is there any way in that i can archive both CLI and IDE without downloading anything? Like copying some folders and stuff, so i can install that on multiple computers without relaying on my crap internet connection?

4

You have listed development platforms… Where the each development platform could be run on the multiple host OS.

In any case, what is your OS? I’ll try to give you a few hints how to reduce “internet” dependency for PlatformIO.

5

Thank you!

I’m only running OS X’s.

6

Here are a few steps to make off-line installation:

  1. Copy ~/.platformio folder to pio_cli_backup_dir. Edit pio_cli_backup_dir/appstate.json file and replace key "cid" with "cid_old",
  2. Archive pio_cli_backup_dir. You can clone it on the many Macs in the same location: ~/.platformio.
  3. Download clean version of Atom text editor from http://atom.io.
  4. Install it on the new Macs. Close.
  5. Copy ~/.atom/packages to pio_ide_backup_dir. Remove pio_ide_backup_dir/platformio-ide/penv.
  6. Archive pio_ide_backup_dir. You can clone it on the many Macs in the same location: ~/.atom/packages.
  7. Open Atom/PlatformIO IDE. It should only download the latest PlatformIO CLI’s Python package ~1Mb.

P.S: Is it for school?

7

Thank you so much!

It’s not a formal school. It’s for an educational project. We are trying to introduce development to teenagers with Arduino. We are running some old Mac computers, and will be start using windows or linux soon to reduce expenses.

The problem is that there is no connection on the place where we are going to do this, and my internet connection at home is crapy, so it will be very helpful using those steps which you provided for installing on the actual computers and also the future ones.

Is there any implications of license for this kind of use?

8

Maybe a tool may help to prepare an offline installation. Tool may download the platforms and packages to a local report and we can install platform packages from there or tool may download and install packages/platforms in a bundled portable way.

9

@ivankravets This link doesn’t seem to work anymore. Is there a new one?