PlatformIO Core 5.0 🚀

[ivankravets]

@codewitch-honey-cris

But none of that matters if the projects periodically just stop building. Or if i can’t move projects from one machine to another without reinstalling platform IO on the target machine. etc. These are the things that keep me from being able to work until i fix them, and that’s what’s not acceptable. I can’t keep coming to my clients with “i’ll be a few hours later with this deliverable because Platform I/O is acting up again”

Could you reproduce this issue on other client’s machines? What is your OS? Do you use 3rd party antivirus tools? How is your internet connection? Do you use VPN? (PlatformIO needs an Internet connection to download dependent toolchains, etc)

@codewitch-honey-cris

The best part of Platform IO is actually VS Code, not platform IO. Everything Platform IO does better than arduino is because of VS Code and related extensions. Things like intellisense.

If the only value which PlatformIO brings to you is “intellisense”, please take a look at Arduino - Visual Studio Marketplace or Arduino IDE 2.0 Beta.

PlatformIO was not invented to add “intellisense” for Arduino IDE or other frameworks. The mission is to allow any developer to work with different hardware and software frameworks without having an electronic degree. Also, give developers a choice to build their own development environment. We don’t force people to VSCode or Windows. Our goal is to support the most popular IDEs/code editors and operating systems.

Being fully independent of IDE/OS, developers can move their projects between the host machines, and PlatormIO guarantees full reproducibility. Also, team members can collaborate on the same project using the different combinations of IDE + OS, or CLI. All of them use one place to provide configuration - platformio.ini.

[codewitch-honey-cris]

@ivankravets

Could you reproduce this issue on other client’s machines? What is your OS?

Yes. I can. That’s why I have to anydesk in to a client’s machine to do firmware updates. because platform i/o works badly. On both remote machines at his desk.

Just like it does on my old windows install. And my new windows install. And windows in a VM. And Linux as a host OS. And linux in VM.

YES I CAN REPRODUCE. Pick a configuration, and over a long enough timeline (not very long) I can reproduce stability issues with your product.

If it wasn’t regularly having issues, I wouldn’t be writing it right now.

You want to know how to reproduce one right now?

Take an ESP-IDF project from one machine, place in on a target machine that has never had ESP-IDF installed before.

Open folder in VS Code on the new machine (with platform IO installed)

it’s not going to build.

The workaround is to create a new project with the same board/platform/framework settings as your desired project on the target machine, forcing it to download the necessary bits. Then you can open the original project.

I know dozens of work arounds like this for as many problems. That is the problem.

It needs to be tested. And it needs to actually be used for more than toy development in the wild or all it will ever be is a toy for making toys.

PlatformIO was not invented to add “intellisense” for Arduino IDE or other frameworks. The mission is to allow any developer to work with different hardware and software frameworks without having an electronic degree.

Funny, because as I said, I have a literal electrical engineer who makes me anydesk to run platform io on his end because he’s had too many issues with it.

So maybe you should make it work for the people with the electronics degrees first at least? And then everybody else?

And if intellisense for IoT development wasn’t platform IO’s mission that’s really too bad, because it’s the best part of platform IO

Our goal is to support the most popular IDEs/code editors and operating systems.

In practice, it’s used with VS Code. It doesn’t matter that it was intended for other editors if that’s not how people use it. Wake me when it works with Visual Studio.

I’m not going to look at the arduino offering. I’m already done with them. I’ll take a look at the other, but right now I’m happy with VisualGDB. If I had known about it before I would have skipped PIO and the Arduino IDE entirely.

[normandunbar]

Hello,
Pardon me for jumping in…

@codewitch-honey-cris

Take an ESP-IDF project from one machine, place in on a target machine that has never had ESP-IDF installed before.

Open folder in VS Code on the new machine (with platform IO installed)

I’ve just done my once every decade task of completely wiping my laptop, reinstalling only the stuff I need, and getting rid of the cruft I’ve installed over the years.

I copied back all my Arduino and plain AVR projects, with VSCode and PlarformIO installed, but no frameworks yet.

Compiling the first Arduino project correctly downloaded and installed the necessary framework and tools. No problems at all.

This is on Linux (Mint 20.1) and the latest VSCode. I have a Windoes 10 box lying around unloved that I can try this on.

Is there a test ESP-IDF that you know gives problems, that I can borrow to test please? I’ve never had ESP-IDF installed on either Linux or the Win 10 box, so would be an interesting test.

Stupid question, maybe, when you copy the project which subsequently fails, do you copy just the sources or all of it, including the compiled binaries and any used libraries?

Cheers,
Norm.

[codewitch-honey-cris]

I forgot to mention in that, don’t copy the .pio folder (since it’s part of .gitignore) - it’s build cache stuff, it’s not the project bones. I can prepare a test. This particular problem I’ve tested on windows - two different windows installs. This should do it. GitHub - codewitch-honey-crisis/perftest

It’s just some virtual filesystem code i’m fleshing out. You may have to modify platformio.ini as most people don’t have a WROVER ESP dev kit nor have to worry about it’s dual COM ports, but I like the upload speeds i get.

[normandunbar]

Thanks.

If I get a chance tomorrow, I’ll see if I can crash out PlatformIO on my Linux box, and if not, on Windows 10.

I have my first covid vaccination tomorrow, so I might be waiting in line for a while!

Cheers,
Norm.

[codewitch-honey-cris]

Good luck with that! Above is the most recent project where I’ve had it happen on two different windows installs (both windows 10 home). I haven’t tried it on linux since all my linux boxen need to be rebuilt. (moving away from ubuntu 18.04 because it started having major issues and i can’t trust it any longer but i haven’t had the time)

[normandunbar]

a quick git clone, cd wherever, code . and click the PlatformIO compile button gives an error:

“command ‘platformio-ide.build’ not found” in vscode.

I did not change anything and I do not have the hardware, so no software installed yet. I did not use PlatformIO Home or anything, just opened in VSCode, and clicked compile.

I do have the PlatformIO commands on my $PATH, so I can use them from a terminal session.

On the command line, pio run works perfectly. It downloaded a pile of stuff (technical term) and compiled just fine:

Advanced Memory Usage is available via "PlatformIO Home > Project Inspect"
RAM:   [=         ]   5.0% (used 16448 bytes from 327680 bytes)
Flash: [====      ]  40.6% (used 426064 bytes from 1048576 bytes)
esptool.py v3.0
======================== [SUCCESS] Took 127.82 seconds

On Linux. I have not tried Windows as it seems I have recreated your problem, or one similar.

Is this the same as what you are seeing?

Cheers,
Norm.

[normandunbar]

Here are some better details, I’m back from my vaccination, and had a bit more time to recreate your scenario, or at least, something that resembles it.

Steps to recreate:

• Delete all the tools in $HOME/.platformio/packages.

• In command line:

  mkdir xxx
  cd xxx
  git clone https://github.com/codewitch-honey-crisis/perftest.git .
  code .
  

  VSCode opens with the xxx folder open.

• Click on toolbar build icon/button. Fails almost immediatley with “command ‘platformio-ide.build’ not found” error message at lower right.

In $HOME/.platformio/packages, I now have the following new directories:

• framework-espidf
• toolchain-esp32ulp
• toolchain-xtensa32
• tool-cmake
• tool-ninja

However, I didn’t look inside to see if there were any files.

• Click build toolbar button again and this time it successfully builds after downloading and installing/extracting various packages. Unfortunately, the names and details have scrolled off the top of the VSCode terminal session for the build.

The same problem does not appear if I start again, and without opening VSCode, I simply run the command line options to compile the project:

pio run

It downloads and extracts the tools etc, then builds a lot of stuff, but it works fine with no errors. Finishes with “SUCCESS” message after 271.17 seconds. (My laptop is only a dual core jobby with 8GB RAM (maxed out), and is over 10 years old!)

I do not have the PlatformIO-core installed, only PlatformIO-ide within VSCode, but I have added my $HOME/.platformio/penv/bin directory to my $PATH, so the commands are available.

Python3 is the only version of Python installed. It’s actually version 3.8.5 and when PlatformIO is installed, it doesn’t install it’s own version of Python (into $HOME/.platformio/penv/bin) but links to the systemwide installed version:

norman@hubble:~/.platformio/penv/bin$ ls -l python*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 norman norman 16 Feb 26 11:16 python -> /usr/bin/python3
lrwxrwxrwx 1 norman norman  6 Feb 26 11:16 python3 -> python
lrwxrwxrwx 1 norman norman  6 Feb 26 11:16 python3.8 -> python

Nevertheless, I have VSCode configured to “Use a portable Python3 installation, if available” in the PlatformIo options.

So, long story short:

• I can recreate something like your problem straight away if I open a folder with a project which I don’t have the tools for on my laptop.
• I appear to be able to compile and build it on the second attempt from within VSCode.
• I have absolutely no problems compiling from scratch, in the command line, using the exact commands/scripts that PlatformIo is calling from within VSCode.
• I have only tested this on Linux.

One question, what version of Python are you using? Did you download an installer from python.org? Or did Microsoft install a version for you? I ask because recently it seems that the Microsoft version doesn;t work for a number of people whereas the python.org version does.

and, Python 3.9 has it’s own problems, or had until recently. Stick with 3.8 for now.

HTH

Cheers,
Norm.

[codewitch-honey-cris]

Thanks for the detailed breakdown. I’m sure that took some time and I appreciate it. I’m pretty sure python was installed at the same time as PlatformIO (unless Git installs it) - at least the second time i got it to happen. The first time it happened, I had installed the ESP-IDF from Espressif’s site and was developing with that in the raw (using idf.py) before putting platform IO in.

I don’t know how to get the version of python used by the PlatformIO tool chain because the command prompt in VS Code under PlatformIO doesn’t have it in the path for some reason.

[normandunbar]

@codewitch-honey-cris

Thanks for the detailed breakdown. I’m sure that took some time and I appreciate it. I’m pretty sure python was installed at the same time as PlatformIO (unless Git installs it) - at least

No worries. You are having a problem that I’ve not seen before, I got interested. Mr Nosey, that’s me, plus I actually work in IT Support in real life. I’m an Oracle DBA,when I’m working I am!

To see the Python version, which is installed with PlatformIO 5.x,if I remember correctly, just go to C:\Users\YOUR_NAME\.platformio\penv\Scripts in acommand-line session and run the python you see there.

If you add C:\Users\YOUR_NAME\.platformio\penv\Scripts to your %PATH% in Control Panel, you’ll get all the command-line stuff for PlatformIO. So, no more VSCode to create projects, just a quick:

mkdir xxx
cd xxx
pio init --board uno

Obviously, replace uno with your board name. Job done.

I’m interested to know if you are able to copy down a project for which you don’t have the tools installed and build it with pio run in the same folder as the platformio.ini file.

It works fine here.

Oh, git doesn’t install python, as far as I’m aware.

Cheers,
Norm.

[codewitch-honey-cris]

Thanks, I’ll give it a shot when I get a chance later today. I’ve got a fire to put out first. =)

[pfeerick]

I tried cloning that project (GitHub - codewitch-honey-crisis/perftest), and running it on my Windows 10 system, with no issue. Note that I didn’t clear my ~3.6GB %userprofile%\.platformio\packages directory first… not waiting for all that to download again!

btw, probably not a good idea to blow it away completely… contrib-piohome and contrib-pysite probably won’t get re-installed… and thus you kill PIO Home in the process! (Ok, PlatformIO will reinstall piohome if it is run. I’m not sure what part of PIO depends on pysite, but it will hopefully reinstall if needed. Looks some some parts of PIO really are idiot-proof!! ).

Even if I do move out the contents of %userprofile%\.platformio\packages, and re-open VSCode, after waiting for the ‘PlatformIO: Rebuilding IntelliSense Index’ statusbar notification to go away (which is when it’s ensuring all the toolchain and libraries are downloaded / installed), it built fine.

There are some issues with PlatformIO and the VSCode extension (which is where most problems come from… if you run the platformio cli instead, you’ll probably find all your problems go away completely). The 2.3.0 extension, released four days ago, now allows you to select which project and while environment is compiled when you click the statusbar build and upload icons… hence it will compile the wrong one if the selector hasn’t been changed.