PlatformIO Open Source July Updates
Improved PlatformIO IDE for Microsoft VSCode, PlatformIO Core bugfix release, New Renesas RA dev-platform, New boards and dev-kits, support for the latest Mbed OS
Welcome to the July 2023 updates of PlatformIO Open Source professional collaborative platform for embedded development.
This month we received a lot of helpful feedback from our community, which let us identify the most important parts of our OSS ecosystem that required our attention, so there are plenty of updates pushed in this month that we hope you will like.
During July, we have released a new dev-platform for Renesas RA MCUs, rolled out an updated version of PlatformIO IDE for Visual Studio Code, published a bugfix release for PlatformIO Core, added support for the latest Arm Mbed OS v6.17, resolved a lot of issues. Some of the key highlights include:
- PlatformIO IDE 3.3 for Visual Studio Code
- PlatformIO Core 6.1.9
- New Renesas RA dev-platform
- Arm Mbed OS v6.17
PlatformIO IDE 3.3 for Visual Studio Code
We are pleased to announce a new stable release of PlatformIO IDE 3.3 for Visual Studio Code with great improvements to the task management functionality:
- Enhanced the user experience in the “Project Tasks” explorer by displaying tasks specific to the selected environment by default
- Introduced a new option that allows seamless switching between multi-environment project tasks
- Expanded the functionality of the “Activity Bar > PlatformIO IDE > Quick Access” menu by including a new item called Serial & UDP Plotter
- Updated the PlatformIO Core Installer Script to version 1.2.0
See Release Notes for more detailed information.
PlatformIO Core 6.1.9
PlatformIO Core is the heart of the whole PlatformIO ecosystem and we are excited to announce the next v6.1.9 release with lots of great improvements and bugfixes:
- Added a new
--lintoption to the pio project config command, enabling users to efficiently perform linting on the “platformio.ini” configuration file - Enhanced the parsing of the “platformio.ini” configuration file to provide comprehensive diagnostic information
- Expanded the functionality of the library.json manifest by allowing the use of the underscore symbol in the keywords field
- Optimized project integration templates to address the issue of long paths on Windows (issue #4652)
- Refactored Unit Testing engine to resolve compiler warnings with “-Wpedantic” option (pull #4671)
- Eliminated erroneous warning regarding the use of obsolete PlatformIO Core when downgrading to the stable version (issue #4664)
- Updated the pio project metadata command to return C/C++ flags as parsed Unix shell arguments when dumping project build metadata
- Resolved a critical issue related to the usage of the
-includeflag within the build_flags option, specifically when employing dynamic variables (issue #4682) - Removed PlatformIO IDE for Atom from the documentation as Atom has been deprecated
- Rectified a regression bug that occurred when the
-includeflag was passed via the build_flags option as a relative path and subsequently expanded (issue #4683) - Resolved an issue that resulted in unresolved absolute toolchain paths when generating the Compilation database “compile_commands.json” (issue #4684)
See Release Notes for more detailed information and use pio upgrade command to update to the latest version.
New Renesas RA dev-platform
During the last few months, we have received a lot of private and public inquiries from our community about the integration of the Renesas Advanced (RA) 32-bit microcontrollers into the PlatformIO ecosystem. At PlatformIO, we highly value the opinions and feedback of our community members. It is through their insights that we continually strive to enhance our offerings and meet their evolving needs.
With this integration, PlatformIO users gain access to a wider selection of powerful microcontrollers, enabling them to leverage the Renesas RA MCU series’ advanced features and capabilities. We encourage all developers to explore the newly added support for Renesas devices and provide us with valuable feedback to further refine our services.
The first stable release of the Renesas RA dev-platform brings initial support for several development boards and frameworks:
- Supported boards:
- Initial support for Arduino framework (release notes)
- Initial support for CMSIS framework (#7)
- Initial support for native FSP framework (#7)
Related resources for the Renesas RA dev-platform:
Arm Mbed OS v6.17
We’re happy to announce updated support for the latest version of Mbed OS v6.17 - an open source embedded operating system designed specifically for the “things” in the Internet of Things. It includes all the features you need to develop a connected product based on an Arm Cortex-M microcontroller, including security, connectivity, an RTOS and drivers for sensors and I/O devices.
More information on project configuration for the Mbed OS can be found here.
Related resources for Arm Mbed OS:
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