What do you think is the best IDE for ATmega328P? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: c64
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 29, 2020, 06:23:57 am
content: So far I used Atmel Studio and Arduino IDE. They are OK but maybe you guys think something else is better?

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 29, 2020, 07:06:44 am
content: I use the Arduino IDE for quick and dirty hacks and tests and usually emacs for more serious coding (as with every other CPU type).Many people might prefer VS Code over emacs, especially with platformio. It's good too

author: T3sl4co1l
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 29, 2020, 03:05:04 pm
content: Code::Blocks is pretty easy to set up, and also far more compact and well behaved than the others.Tim

author: cliffyk
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 29, 2020, 09:54:47 pm
content: I have come to like UECIDE (https://uecide.org/):It can be a bit finicky at times, however the UI is nice; the Project Manager panel is very helpful. Runs well on Linux...

author: thm_w
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 30, 2020, 01:09:55 am
content: For arduino, full featured IDE with debug:VisualGDB. Visualmicro is a similar option as well. Neither are lightweight.Any IDE that does not allow setting the micro type (along with port, debug, etc.) on a per project basis, is an effort in frustration.Why the official IDE does not build these settings into the .ino file is a mystery to me.

author: hve
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: June 30, 2020, 01:41:24 am
content: vim + platformio

author: T3sl4co1l
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 30, 2020, 03:51:43 am
content: Quote from: cliffyk on June 29, 2020, 09:54:47 pmHeh, looks very much like the old OpenWatcom. Mainly because of the font and colors, I think.Tim

author: WattsThat
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 30, 2020, 04:10:03 am
content: Quote from: T3sl4co1l on June 30, 2020, 03:51:43 amYes, it’s definitely got that Windows 3.1 font and MDI look.God, I’ll never forget that font, I hand encoded it, reading pixels with Windows Paint for use on an embedded system in 1993. Used ColorRix VGA paint to create the graphics, ported the Windows sans fixed font to that package after reverse engineering the Huffman encoded font files.

author: T3sl4co1l
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 30, 2020, 04:29:49 am
content: Hah, yikes!Not to get too far off topic, but a somewhat modern contrast to that work flow -- I made this,The text is real fonts, made from real fonts:- Took a screenshot of the real fonts (Lucidia and Lucidia Bold; antialiased), codes 32-127 (Lucidia; Bold, only select glyphs: numbers, units and labels), color #000000 on background #ffffff- Cropped to size and marked up with sentinels denoting margins between characters (this is a proper proportional width font we're making!)- Dropped into a local webpage and converted with JS into a 16-color palettized grayscale image- And finally Huffman encoded, as it happens (using a not quite ideal, but easily implemented, custom code)The "sprite sheet" (for Lucidia) takes 3575 bytes uncompressed (4bpp, packed), 1.64k in PNG, and 1.81k encoded. Not bad for a non-LZ method.(Slightly on topic: it's implemented on an AVR?)Tim

author: westfw
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 30, 2020, 04:46:14 am
content: For "serious work" (say, when I'm trying to make modifications to the Arduino core) I use EMACS, build an ID-utils database and a TAGS file, and use make and cli tools for compile. Maybe with Atmel Studio as a debugger.AS is ok, I guess. MPLABX seems a bit "amateurish" in comparison, and the AVR support is "not quite done."Arduino is nice and simple for problems that are nice and simple.I've a mind to avoid IDEs that only work for a small set of chips (which unfortunately includes AS)

author: gmc
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: June 30, 2020, 08:09:51 am
content: I started using VSC + PlatformIO. Takes a bit of getting used to but it has so many advantages over Arduino IDE. Have never looked back since.

author: cliffyk
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 30, 2020, 08:29:30 pm
content: Quote from: T3sl4co1l on June 30, 2020, 03:51:43 amGuess my age and heritage are showing; the font and colors are my customizations, it comes with a number of themes--including one or two of the contemporary prerequisite "dark" themes (which BTW I detest).After Windows 286, which in the business world served mostly as a runtime for Excel, Microsoft¹ spent gobs and gobs of money on market research, focus groups, etc. to develop the Win 3 UI. The primary goal was usability in business environments as there were looking to kick Novell (WordPerfect) and Lotus off desktops². I value clarity and legibility in my desktop as for me it is just a tool, like a claw hammer or Crescent wrench. not an "experience".I worked in IT for 22 years, for an organisation with 17,000 users. We moved from 3.1 to Win 95, then XP, then Win 7 (never implementing "aero" as it added nothing for business use). We never used Win 8 mostly because of that silly "Braqdy Bunch" UI which was a complete "fustercluck". Can you imagine retraining 17,000 users just because Microsoft let some pre-pubescent graphics designers loose in a technological playpen.When I retired in 2016 they were still running "7", Windows 10 was being discussed but no one was overjoyed about it. Somewhat grudgingly they are now of course using it--with a very active Linux exploratory group.-----------------------------------------------¹ - "micro" = small, "soft" = not hard: would you name you company "Small and Not Hard" -- fromBeavis & Butthead Travel America² - Which they did, for years we ran Win 3.1 on top of Novell Servers--Novell owned small business LANs; if they had welcomed Windows and let MS have the desktop instead of fighting it (Novell at that time did not support TCPIP) NT Server would never have caught any ground).It's amazing how many companies that owned an industry or segment thereof that have stuck their self-aggrandized heads up their backsides and ignored progress and competition.Novell, owned small business data systems but ignored Windows;Lotus, owned electronic spreadsheets but ignored Excel;Polaroid, owned instant imaging but ignored digital cameras 'til it was too late and then they slapped "Polaroid" stickers on cheap Vivitar cameras;Kodak owned photography in general but ignored digital imaging, kissing up to it only with lackluster digital cameras that were just electronic "Instamatics".They, like Polaroid, did not seem to realize the consumer film industry was dead.

author: c64
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 02, 2020, 05:42:18 am
content: Thanks guys I will check out all of them. So far I tried Code Blocks and UECIDE and noticed they don't even have auto-completion. Is it really so or something wrong with my install?

author: T3sl4co1l
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 02, 2020, 07:26:03 am
content: Certainly works for me, I have a C / AVR project open in C::B at this moment and CTRL+SPACE, autocomplete, all that stuff works fine. Do you have a working toolchain yet, does it know where all the includes and stuff are at? (Should still give autocomplete even for a lone file, for all things declared in it.)Oh wow, they released a... several new version numbers at once, just skipping over the inbetween, it's up to version 20.03 as of March, cool. I'm still on 17.12. Well, I guess I wonder what default settings were changed?... (you did snoop around the various options menus, right?)Can't speak for UECIDE, or if you're running another OS, and who knows what other configurations, of course.Tim

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 02, 2020, 10:17:00 am
content: Quote from: c64 on July 02, 2020, 05:42:18 amAhahaha ... if something has autocomplete I turn it off. It's just freaking annoying.

author: RoGeorge
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 02, 2020, 10:57:06 am
content: Try Visual Studio Code with the Arduino and C/C++ plugins (try the clean plugins maintained by Microsoft, not the bloated and payed plugins made by others).Visual Studio Code is from Microsoft, but it's free and open source now, and can run on either Windows, Linux or Mac.It was the best of all the IDEs I've tried, including a few payed ones, like IAR, code::blocks, JetBrains, etc. I'm not a fun of Microsoft, but their IDE is by far the best in existence, with a huge range of features and plugins, very productive and intuitive interface, with a huge adoption rate at all levels. It fits everybody, from the lonely hobbyist to the pro teams of software devs. Also, very well documented and with a lot of community support, from simple Q&A to video tutorials or even textbooks.

author: Psi
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 02, 2020, 11:32:28 am
content: Quote from: RoGeorge on July 02, 2020, 10:57:06 amI've not tried it for AVR stuff but i do use it for nRF52 and am liking the interface and IDE a lot.Will definitely give it a try for AVR and maybe STM32 if i can find some easy way to set it up for that.

author: John_L
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: July 02, 2020, 01:05:24 pm
content: VS Code and PlatformIO work great for me. Support for Arduino, Mbed etc. for STM and ESP32.https://platformio.org/

author: cliffyk
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 03, 2020, 01:57:39 am
content: UECIDE does not provide any code completion of which I am aware--likebrucehollt, I'd shut it off anyway...I have MS's VS Code thing but have never been able to get the Arduino IDE installed and operating properly--just a bunch of obfuscating error messages which I am sure are perfectly clear to it's developers (years back we called thisCOIK¹). And like most MS products it gets updated more often that I change undies.Also, like Thunderbird, Google Chrome & Earth, and other constantly updated software; many of the "updates" break things you have finally gotten to work he way you like.-----------------------------------------------¹-COIK--ClearOnlyIfKnown)

author: c64
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 03, 2020, 02:22:42 am
content: Quote from: T3sl4co1l on July 02, 2020, 07:26:03 amYes probably something not set up. It works for a lone file

author: lucazader
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: July 03, 2020, 02:43:51 am
content: I use VScode for all my development now days.PIO plugin when I have to do something quick on aruduino.But for stm32 development i just use makefiles and the handy compiledb python tool to generate the compile_commands.json file. allow easy auto configuration of the ctrl+click navigation etc for non PIO projects.

author: TomS_
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2020, 10:53:14 am
content: Quote from: cliffyk on June 30, 2020, 08:29:30 pmI use dark themes because I find them easier on the eyes by not having a blazing bright screen in my face all day.Or maybe its because as a network engineer Im used to the command line and terminals which are traditionally <some colour> text on a black background.

author: Psi
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 06, 2020, 12:54:24 pm
content: Dark theme is the first thing i look for in an IDE.If it has no dark theme, or if there's one white window where you cannot change the bg color, then that IDE is disqualified on the spot.

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 06, 2020, 10:21:40 pm
content: I don't get you guys who complain about "blazing bright screens". Do you not know how to adjust the picture controls?Traditional terminals were light colour on black because of their primitive technology, principally that the refresh rate was low so that a light coloured image flickered horribly. Sometimes you even found that the power draw (?) of a bright screen affected the scan geometry.The Xerox Star (which I didn't use myself), Three Rivers/ICL Perq (which I did), and Apple Lisa/Mac showed that, properly implemented, a light coloured screen is preferable.It was many years later before the average screen on an MSDOS/Windows machine became good enough quality to make light coloured display tolerable. While there were exceptions (e.g. people who stumped up the cash for Sony Trinitrons) I would say Windows with a light theme didn't really become tolerable on most machines until the LCD era.However you still need to set it up correctly.On the vast majority of modern monitors the correct setting is BRIGHTNESS minimum CONTRAST maximum. Here seen on the cheap Philips 32" 4K monitor on my Linux machine.

author: thm_w
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 06, 2020, 10:55:36 pm
content: Quote from: brucehoult on July 06, 2020, 10:21:40 pmI've actually had to modify my monitors to provide a lower PWM brightness than they were designed for. The default minimum brightness was way too high. I occasionally work in the dark though.Anyway, if you crank down brightness, contrast eventually suffers. You still get lower "average" light level with white on black, but, its all personal preference here.

author: T3sl4co1l
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 07, 2020, 12:53:57 am
content: I used to run at quite high brightness, for the most part. As I started working, in front of screens for the better part of a day, I realized, man, these things are stupid bright. I turned down the LCD panels at work to probably 25% the light output, which was roughly comparable to ambient lighting, and still perfectly legible. Back at home, my old Trinitron at the time was probably faded enough not to need adjustment, in fact it was already quite dim, enough that I need to draw blinds in here when the sun's out.Think the most stark contrast (ha?) I noticed was when I added an LCD to the Trinitron here and matched them for brightness. (The Trinitron finally passed away last year.)Tim

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 07, 2020, 03:53:16 am
content: Quote from: thm_w on July 06, 2020, 10:55:36 pmFair enough. Actual dark is a special case.In daylight (e.g. below) my monitors are a bit dimmer than the room interior. At night they are a bit brighter. But not objectionably so in either case, at least for me.

author: cliffyk
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2020, 11:13:52 pm
content: What you guys show is very much as I adjust my monitor:In his bookOgilvy on Advertising(1985) David Ogilvy stated that if a publisher made you post a disclaimer with an "advertorial"; set it in 'reverse'--most people will not read it; to ensure no one reads it make it 'reverse, italic, caps'."

author: MarkMLl
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2020, 09:32:03 pm
content: The Arduino IDE is unbelievably crude as a development environment (I saw better in the 1980s), but their board and libraries managers are decidedly ahead of the pack.I've played with one of the Eclipse customisations which was supposed to be a viable alternative, but it was quite simply over-complex and top-heavy with stuff that was unlikely to be used.Elsewhere I'm told that there's a new one which is supposedly tailored to be similar to (but better than) the Arduino IDE, I've not tried it but in case anybody's interestedhttps://marketplace.eclipse.org/node/2637354MarkMLl

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 12, 2020, 12:41:31 am
content: Quote from: MarkMLl on July 11, 2020, 09:32:03 pmI've seen people writing code in Windows Notepad!!Recently.

author: RoGeorge
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 12, 2020, 01:00:17 am
content: Windows Notepad is advanced. If you write on the first lineCode:.LOGthen save as txt and close the file, each time you'll open that file, Windows Notepad will automatically insert a timestamp for you.Nice to keep journals or log changes. Not so good for large files.

author: Chris42
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: July 13, 2020, 11:57:51 am
content: QuoteArduino IDE is one of the worst IDEs that I have ever used. More advanced features like jumping to declaration, auto completion, or error checking don't exist. There is no way to change fusebit or even clock settings without editing some poorly documented config files. Terrible! Also forget about decent support for multiple files. No searching across multiple files, no split view, no nothing.And of course the worst: No dark theme. Everybody knows that programmers are like vampires and they are really scared of light background.The only reason to use it is decent library and board manager. Also if you have an arduino board programming in arduino IDE just works.I personally use Platform IO in VS code studio. It's free and has decent features. They are also plugins for things like code linting or static code analysis. Very useful.

author: westfw
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 13, 2020, 09:29:03 pm
content: Quotehttps://taunoerik.art/portfolio/arduino-dark-theme/One of the mixed blessings of the Arduino IDE is the rate at which it changes. Used to be that you had to replace obscure files in some hidden subdirectory to change the theme. Nowadays, it's a preferences option. Sort of.QuoteNot true.QuoteIt's an IDE for a rather limited number ofboard-levelproducts. For functionality beyond that, install a "board package" that has already modified those obscure config files for you. (for example, "Minicore" lets you change clock options and BOD level.) Is it really so much worse than waiting for Microchip to add the appropriate "pack" for something?

author: MarkMLl
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 14, 2020, 06:52:35 am
content: Quote from: westfw on July 13, 2020, 09:29:03 pmEverybody agrees that its board and library managers are good, in fact noticeably better than comes with the Eclipse variants (which don't even handle things like platform.local.txt properly).The IDE itself is sufficiently crude that I could replicate it in an afternoon using my IDE/RAD of choice. But because of the board/library managers I'm not considering this seriously.MarkMLl

author: kripton2035
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 14, 2020, 08:02:23 am
content: I really like geany for arduino IDE. you can handle complex projects with it.https://www.geany.org

author: Syntax Error
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 14, 2020, 04:04:53 pm
content: Atmel Studio.https://www.microchip.com/mplab/avr-support/atmel-studio-7

author: Renate
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 15, 2020, 01:12:32 pm
content: Notepad++ & make

author: firewalker
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 15, 2020, 01:40:01 pm
content: I am using Codeblocks.http://www.codeblocks.org/Alexander.