[Feature Request]: support Host-Generated Flash Encryption and Release Mode (VSC-1017)

[chipweinberger]

related: https://github.com/espressif/esptool/issues/809 https://github.com/espressif/esp-idf/issues/10340

Backgound

Docs: https://docs.espressif.com/projects/esp-idf/en/latest/esp32s3/security/flash-encryption.html#manual-encryption

ESP-IDF has 2 flash encryption modes:

• release
• development

Problem

Release mode is not supported by the VSC ESP-IDF Extension, even if we have a Host Generated key.

Currently in Release Mode, VSC Flash Command just completely fails:

A fatal error occurred: Detecting flash size is not supported in secure download mode. Need to manually specify flash size.

[chipweinberger]

A fatal error occurred: Detecting flash size is not supported in secure download mode. Need to manually specify flash size.

This is despite my Flash Size being specified in my Menu Config.

[github-actions[bot]]

This issue has been marked as stale since there are no activities, and this will be closed in 5 days if there are no further activities

[chipweinberger]

@brianignacio5 appreciate you taking a look at this again.

Just to provide more thoughts, I'm thinking:

• the user would have to specify an aes key file
• vsc would encrypt the binary using this key and esp-secure.py
• vsc would upload the encrypted binary

[brianignacio5]

Sorry this was automatically closed by the bot, This could be a nice feature plan but a bit dangerous for beginner users so need to consider some validations as well.

Thank you for the thoughts, will think of feature action plan for this and decide with IDF team a good course of action. Will tag any work done related to this.

[chipweinberger]

No problem. No rush! This is low priority for me now, as I made my own flashing tool to handle this. But it would have been convenient to have VSC support it directly.

[github-actions[bot]]

This issue has been marked as stale since there are no activities, and this will be closed in 5 days if there are no further activities

[chipweinberger]

I'm getting closer to production, and this feature would be very useful.

• I want to use production devices for ongoing development
• production devices use a host generated flash encryption key

This means i lose the ability to push the "flash" button in vscode, which is annoying!

Perhaps I can rig up the "run custom command button" myself as a workaround. 😀 Thanks again for adding that.

That said, i think this feature would be very simple to implement? Like 1 day of work maximum.