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The New Arduino IDE 2.0 Review by Tim Blythman The Arduino boards and software are incredibly popular, mainly because of the free, powerful and easy-to-use integrated development environment (IDE) for developing code. Now there has been a significant revision of the IDE with the beta release of version 2.0. Here is what you can expect from it. I t was just in March last year that we took an in-depth look at the Arduino ecosystem (siliconchip.com.au/ Article/12575). That article included details on the history of the Arduino software; primarily, the IDE. Tracing its history back almost 20 years to the Wiring IDE (http://wiring. org.co/), it has been nearly 10 years since the official version 1.0 release of the Arduino IDE. It is open-source, which means that it is easy to write libraries, add support for new boards and even make clones of existing boards. Some people have noted that the Arduino IDE lacks some features that experienced programmers have come to expect from other development environments. These include features such as debugging, auto-completion and source code management. command-line-based Arduino-cli (command-line interface) and the Arduino Pro IDE. We understand that a lot of what has gone into the new IDE has been informed by those programs. First look Opening up the IDE after installation opens a window as shown in Screen 1. The overall appearance is similar to older versions, but with a few extra buttons down the left-hand side and a new drop-down list near the top. These extra buttons are to access the Boards Manager, Library Manager and the debugging and search functions. These are features we expect to use a lot, so it’s handy to have them just one click away. The new drop-down selects a board and port combination. This makes it easier to work with different projects, as the board and port can be changed easily and together, meaning less chance of getting these mixed up or changing one and not the other. At this stage, the debugging function only works with some SAMD and Mbed boards and requires a separate debugging probe. So we weren’t able to test that feature out. The debugging console and controls are visible in Screen 2. We also found a comprehensive list of keyboard shortcuts; they are accessed from the File → Advanced → Keyboard Shortcuts menu item. The Output window is hidden by default, so pressing the Verify or Upload buttons doesn’t immediately Arduino IDE 2.0 The Arduino IDE 2.0 was released in February, and not long after that, we downloaded it and tried it out. If you don’t wish to switch over fully, it can run alongside the current version 1.8.13 (and older versions). We downloaded the .zip installer version from siliconchip.com.au/link/ab85 Note that Arduino IDE 2.0 is still in the beta stage of development. This means that it is essentially complete, but still has some minor bugs and glitches. The blog announcement (found at siliconchip.com.au/link/ab84) indicates that the new version will include some of the requested features that we mentioned above. In the March 2020 article, we noted that some Arduino software variants had popped up, such as the 70 Silicon Chip Screen 1: simply hovering your mouse over a keyword will bring up a tooltip, pressing F12 will open the file where the keyword is declared. Australia’s electronics magazine siliconchip.com.au Screen 2: the debug controls are shown at left, while the list of keyboard shortcuts is shown in the main editor window. appear to do anything, which is disconcerting. Once the Output window appears (when verification completes), this is less of a problem. The Boards Manager and Library Manager now appear as panels in the Editor window (see Screen 3), rather than modal windows, meaning that they don’t block working on sketches. The Serial Monitor appears as a panel rather than a separate window too. The context-sensitive help feature is also visible in Screen 1. In this case, it is showing the value of an enumerated symbol. This makes it much simpler to follow and troubleshoot code inside sketches. It’s even possible to right-click on an item in the code to jump to the library file which defines it. Line numbering is turned on by default, and small arrows allow functions to be collapsed, making it easier to view and navigate a sketch. Screen 3: the Library Manager is now an integral panel and can be toggled from the block button at left. Screen 4: auto-completion is activated by the Ctrl-Space key combination; the results are often very extensive. siliconchip.com.au Quirks One slight problem we ran into was that opening a new window takes a few seconds in the IDE 2.0, while it is practically instantaneous with older versions. But this is not something that needs to be done often. We also noticed that the IDE did not prompt us to save a changed file when closing the window, but rather it appears to save the changes without prompting. The auto-complete feature (see Screen 4) is very comprehensive (for boards that support it), giving a great number of options, but we had to use Ctrl-Space to trigger it, even though this is not noted in the getting started guide. Interestingly, the IDE 2.0 does not come with any board profiles installed. This suggests that the Arduino developers no longer favour the older AVR boards (their profiles came with older versions of the IDE). Despite this, we Australia’s electronics magazine don’t think we’ll see them disappear any time soon. In any case, they are easy to install from the Boards Manager. Otherwise, the newer version has all the same features and menu items in much the same places, meaning that it’s straightforward to transition between the two. Summary While we haven’t had a chance to test-drive the Arduino IDE 2.0’s full range of features, we’re happy that it does everything that the older versions do and more. We’re looking forward to testing out the debug feature once we have the hardware required. We haven’t come across any glitches in the beta version that have been show-stoppers, but we expect that updated versions will quickly follow that iron out some of the minor quirks we noted above. We’re planning to continue using the Arduino IDE 2.0 to find out what else it has to offer. More information on using the new and improved features of the IDE 2.0 can be found at siliconchip.com.au/ SC link/ab86 June 2021  71