[boards manager] core reference not found

[micooke]

Ive found that a contributed core installed using the boards manager is not visible to boards in the sketchbook/hardware folder.

I haven't checked whether the reverse is also true.

This means that if you want to add new variants to an existing core, you are not able to test it until you install it using the boards manager

[micooke]

Sorry, more clearly - you are not able to test it until you create a package for your variants and install it using the boards manager

[facchinm]

Hi @micooke ,
you are probably missing one nested directory in sketchbook/hardware.
I'm attaching a "variant" core I use to test webUSB stuff, once extracted you'll get sketchbook/hardware/webusb/avr/folder structure which gets recognized by the IDE.
The boards, also, are referencing arduino core via arduino:arduino directive in boards.txt. Let me know if it works for you!

webusb.zip

[micooke]

Unfortunately, thats not the issue. If i forgot the additional folder my variant board would not be visible

I have no problem referencing arduino:arduino, i had an issue referencing a third party core sandeepmistry:nRF5.

Arduino barfed that it could not find sandeepmistry:nRF5 when i selected my variant. This went away when i created a package and installed it through boards manager. Im not sure if it complained about third party tools as i could not get to that point.

It seems like arduino:arduino is treated differently to other cores in this regard.

[micooke]

Hmm, now that i think about it i had the folder order reversed i.e.
' hardware/nRF5/my_variant' when i had them both in tge hardware folder i.e. 'hardware/nRF5/sandeepmistry' it was fine

[facchinm]

Hmmm, sorry, I'm not getting it 🙂 Which is your situation? Could you past here the directories nesting and the relevant files? Thanks!

[micooke]

Im sorry for the confusion, i didnt intend that. Ive tried this on only one machine, but on the two latest Arduino versions. I spent a good half a day hacking away till i resolved it, so hopefully its repeatable and not just a once off.

Install sandeeps nRF5 core the board manager : https://sandeepmistry.github.io/arduino-nRF5/package_nRF5_boards_index.json

And copy my variants into hardware/nRF5. Then select one of the new boards and Arduino complained that the core sandeepmistry:NRF5 was not knstalled. But installing my variant via the board manager resolved this https://micooke.github.io/package_nRF5_smartwatches_index.json

[facchinm]

Ok, super, I've been able to reproduce it 😄
The problem here are the folder names; if you uninstall your core via board manager, you can check that your (sketchbook) core compiles fine if the folder structure is sketchbook/hardware/whatever/nRF5/variants/.... The important piece is nRF5 part, which must match @sandeepmistry 's core first level name. The board manager automatically handles it since it has a broader knowledge about the various cores/tools interdependencies.
Hope it helps!
@per1234 where can we document it to make it easily accessible?

[micooke]

Brilliant! Thanks for looking into it for me.
I know the wiki is a bit of a jumble at the moment, but can I recommend you adding a section here : https://github.com/arduino/Arduino/wiki/Arduino-Hardware-Cores-migration-guide-from-1.0-to-1.6

This is what I used to check the syntax for referencing an external tool.

[per1234]

I feel that it's already documented here:
https://github.com/arduino/Arduino/wiki/Arduino-IDE-1.5-3rd-party-Hardware-specification#referencing-another-core-variant-or-tool

Note that we don't need to specify any architecture since the same architecture of "myboard" is used, so we just say "arduino:arduino" instead of "arduino:avr:arduino".

and here:
https://github.com/arduino/Arduino/wiki/Arduino-Hardware-Cores-migration-guide-from-1.0-to-1.6#step-4-add-tools-for-upload-and-burn-bootloader

Note that the tool is named arduino:avrdude and not simply avrdude, because the IDE should use the avrdude configuration found in the Arduino's AVR cores (note that the reference only specifies the target vendor and tool name, the architecture is assumed to be the same as the core referencing it -- in this case, avr).

I did a little bit of rewording on the latter to make it more clear.

@micooke, do you think that is sufficient documentation? Regarding the "jumble", improvements are always welcome.

[micooke]

That's probably fine, I must have stopped reading that section around the tool section because I hadn't read that.

I guess some of the confusion is that the format is implicit, rather than explicit. I.e. Referencing is maintainer:architecture:core or maintainer:core if you have the same architecture or maintainer:tool. Is this correct?

The confusion being that for the example the maintainer and core are the same. So when I first read this I wondered why the double arduino, why not just one?

[per1234]

maintainer:architecture:core is not supported. I suppose the assumption is that cores, tools, and variants will always be architecture specific so there is no reason to support cross-architecture referencing.

[micooke]

@per1234 - isn't that exactly what arduino:avr:arduino is?

[per1234]

Yes, that reference syntax is not supported.