Pointing to common library location?

Created Fri, 13 Sep 2013 17:36:26 +0000 by epicycloid

epicycloid

Fri, 13 Sep 2013 17:36:26 +0000

Hi -- I am a rank beginner and I know just enough to get into trouble, but usually not enough to get out...

I am using Arduino, chipKIT and Fubarino boards, which means I'm jumping back and forth between the two IDE's, Arduino and MPIDE, and in the case of Arduino both the 1.0.5 and 1.5.4 versions.

I was talking with a friend yesterday about how confusing it is when downloading and updating new libraries for the two IDE's. He doesn't do anything with Ardiono's (yet ;) ) but he does code for a living, and he said he would imagine there was a way to change some compiler directives or settings (not sure what the right term is here?) to point to a common directory for libraries for both IDE's.

Is this something other people have done? It sounded simple for anyone who knows what tells each compiler what path to use and where to look for their respective libraries, to have them both look at the same directory.

My goal is to write code with an #ifdef, or as my friend suggested, a .h file, that could handle all the differences between 1.5.x and 0023+/-, and then attempt to just write my source once, and copy/paste it (or open it) in the target IDE. And obviously this is just a stop-gap until MPIDE catches up to Arduino 1.x.x.

Does this make sense? It doesn't sound like Rocket Science, but it's way out of my league.

--Jon

(P.S. And I'm a Mac user, although I have Win7 installed on VirtualBox for the 4D Systems WIndows-only IDE too.)

majenko

Fri, 13 Sep 2013 17:39:24 +0000

Or... use a single IDE for all the boards...

UECIDE

Then of course you have to ensure your libraries are cross-platform compatible. You can do that by wrapping platform specific parts in

#ifdef __PIC32MX__
// chipKIT code here
#else
// Arduino code here
#endif

epicycloid

Fri, 13 Sep 2013 18:42:03 +0000

Or... use a single IDE for all the boards...

Thanks, I appreciate your enthusiasm for your UECIDE effort, and the ongoing promotion of it, but as a rank beginner this is simply an issue of "orders of magnitude" for me...

The Arduino community is huge, lots of knowledgeable people to ask for help, at all levels. Lots of information on library, shield, board and device compatibility. Lots of help for people just starting out and learning. Comforting to users asking basic questions while learning.

The chipKIT/Fubarino community is (at least) an order of magnitude smaller than the Arduino community, and therefore far fewer people knowledgeable and involved to ask for help. And most people using chipKIT and Fubarino boards seem significantly more technical than I am (read: somewhat intimidating). When I have had problems/questions, I'll read posts that I can't even begin to decipher, and rarely post questions here as a result (even though I've been using chipKIT's for a couple years now(?)).

I have to imagine that the UECIDE community is at least another order of magnitude smaller, and looking at the forum, with only 160 posts to date, I'm not sure that is where a beginner should be trying to survive.

Just one person's point of view,

--Jon

majenko

Fri, 13 Sep 2013 18:49:58 +0000

UECIDE is purely the IDE - the user interface / editor, not the programming language you program in. For help with the programming language you go to the forum for the board you are working with. So, if you're using UECIDE to work with a chipKIT board, and you don't know how to do something with regards to programming the board, you ask here. For a problem writing a program for an Arduino board, you ask on the Arduino forum (where you may be answered by me anyway ;) )

And yes, the "community" is mainly me :)

But besides all that, you can just set the sketchbook folder for all your IDEs to the same location, then they will share the same contributed libraries folder.