Working with Photon on Desktop IDE seemed ok but now I am working with the Electron it is quickly becoming tedious.
I cannot even find documentation that shows how to create a new project in Desktop.
For some reason, I can no longer start projects in the Desktop IDE, the auto complete has disappeared and I get “uncaught type: path must be a string” when I attempt to compile.
There is a “New Folder” option but no “New Project” Option.
Then I thought I would use the online IDE but I cannot figure out how to download my firmware.
In addition, is the workflow that we have to make a change to our firmware, compile in the cloud, download to our PC, get out of windows to the command prompt and run the cli flash command every time (unless we want to pay cellular cost to do OTA)?
There is a little cloud icon next to the project name - that's for downloading your firmware
Assuming you have the latest version of Particle Dev (1.8.0).
The New Project icon is the 3rd one down on the left hand side, quite why that same option is not in the File menu is anybodies guess.
Clicking on that should bring up a dialogue for the project name and location, these cannot be created with special characters or spaces even if Windows allows it. (Opening a project that has such filenames will cause you problems later on.) Once you’ve done that, Particle Dev creates the default project files/structure and opens the README describing that structure. Now you can go File->Open Folder, navigate to that new project folder and it will open in a new instance of Particle Dev.
IMHO it would be preferable if projects had a file like VS has .sln files (which load in the open program instance) and the incredibly irritating behavior of opening the last project to be closed was ditched.
Thanks again. Was an oversight on my part, I should have worked through the menus a bit more before posting.
Actually, this seems a bit inconsistent.
You need to create a new “Project” using the sidebar navigation (and not the main pull down menu) then later when you want to reopen your “project” you use the - open “File” from the main pull down menu.
Why can we not have “New Project”, “Open Project” and “Close Project” etc.options in main pull down menu?
(I don’t think there is a close project option either? - unless the “Close all Tabs” does this)
I really like the hardware and the concepts of the programming but development cycle for Electron is tedious. I cannot image how you guys are managing larger projects with no debugging and having to either use online IDE and download firmware, change the filename, exit to the command line in Windows, navigate to the file location and flash using cli or other tool and repeat. I expected the desktop IDE to allow fast local development but you still need to go to the drive, rename the file (if you want to have a known version of the code) and flash using cli or other tool. Why could the flash function not be contained within the Desktop IDE with a menu option “Compile and Flash”.
I assume that if I want to debug some code (say for SPI memory and Real Time Clock), I could use Arduino with breadboard and test until working and then port across to particle. At least then I would be able to quickly make changes, press the upload button and check the functionality.