The serialport npm package seems to be incompatible with Raspberry Pi ARM

[DavesCodeMusings]

Raspberry Pi 2 can run VS Code (slowly), but the MPRemote extension does not work. Best guess is there is an incompatibility with the serialport npm package, because enumerating serial ports is the first task in the extension's activate function. Possibly there's x86 specific code in there???

However, the mpremote devs command works fine and will detect and enumerate serial ports without a problem.

A possible solution is to use a call to mpremote devs and then parse the output to determine what serial ports are available. This should make the MPRemote VS Code Extension more cross-platform. The extension was using this method in early revisions, so digging up the old code should be easy.

Sample output from mpremote devs running on Raspberry Pi:

$ mpremote devs
/dev/ttyAMA0 None 0000:0000 None None
/dev/ttyUSB0 effacedabacabdeadbeefdecafc0ffee 10c4:ea60 Silicon Labs CP2102N USB to UART Bridge Controller

[DavesCodeMusings]

Old code dug out of commit history is below. This was prior to the context menu-based system the extension uses now, but it does give an example of how to parse mpremote devs output.

async function getDevicePort() {
    return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
        let port = ''
        let deviceList = childProcess.execSync('py -m mpremote devs').toString().split('\r\n')

        if (deviceList == null || deviceList.length == 0) {
            reject('')
        }

        if (deviceList[deviceList.length - 1] == '') {
            deviceList.pop()
        }
        console.debug('Attached devices:', deviceList)

        if (deviceList.length == 1) {
            port = deviceList[0].split(' ')[0]
            console.debug(`Only one device attached: ${port}`)
            resolve(port)
        }
        else {
            let options = {
                title: 'Device Selection',
                canSelectMany: false
            }
            vscode.window.showQuickPick(deviceList, options)
                .then(selection => {
                    port = selection.split(' ')[0]
                    console.debug(`User selection is: ${port}`)
                    resolve(port)
                })
        }
    })
}

[DavesCodeMusings]

In serialportExplorer.ts let comPortList = await SerialPort.list(); needs to be replaced with a function that runs mpremote devs and parses the output to return an array of port paths (e.g. COM3, /dev/ttyUSB0) at a minimum. Returning an object with more robust information like: port.path, port.manufacturer, and port.serialNumber, port.productId, and port.vendorId, should be possible as well, since this is all returned by mpremote devs.

For example: COM3 0001 10c4:ea60 Silicon Labs None equates to port.path port.serialNumber port.vendorId:port.productId port.manufacturer None. Though what None corresponds to, I don't know.