Organisation for multiple projects?

[colinl]

If I want to have more than one node-red-mcu project in development at the same time is there a recommended way of organising things? Ideally I would like the project folder separated from the node-red-mcu folder if possible. At the moment it appears the node-red-mcu folders must be a child of the project folder, unless I am missing something.

[Sineos]

When playing with this, I use the NR command line arguments to start with different flow files, e.g.: node-red --settings settings_1.js flows_1.json

This way you can even have different

process.env.MODDABLE = "C:/Users/souls/Projects/moddable"
process.env.IDF_PATH = "C:/Espressif/frameworks/esp-idf-v4.4.3"

if needed

[colinl]

I have been doing exactly that, but how do I then build the one I want to build without copying it across to Projects?

[phoddie]

@colinl – I don't have a clear enough picture of how the pieces fit together to offer a suggestion yet. In fact, I've always found switching "projects" in Node-RED itself to be awkward (either export / delete / import in the editor, or stop Node-RED/move flows file/restart). Maybe you can share how you are managing that? And from there, I might understand the file organization well enough to offer some suggestion.

[Sineos]

The documentation says you can also pass a project name instead of the flow file (https://nodered.org/docs/getting-started/local). Never tried. My workflow is simple: Have one default installation and simply start a new flows.json when I want to do something new with the MCU

[colinl]

I don't use node-red projects, I was using the word generically. In fact I use a different .node-red folder for each 'project' and each one has its own git repository for source control. So for my wemos D1 Mini devices I might have ~/.node-red_we01, .node-red_we02, etc. I then want to build the flow file there using node-red-mcu. Perhaps the best thing is to install node-red-mcu as a git subproject under each node-red folder so I have control over which version of that is used. On second thoughts that doesn't quite work as the flows file needs to be inside the node-red-mcu folder.

[phoddie]

@colinl, thanks for the details.

that doesn't quite work as the flows file needs to be inside the node-red-mcu folder

The Moddable SDK manifest gives quite a bit of flexibility here. One option is to put a copy of the manifest.json in your project directory (~/.node-red_we01/manifest.json). You will need to update the paths to manifest_host.json and main.js to point to your Node-RED MCU git repository. Then you can just cd ~/.node-red_we01/manifest.json & mcconfig... to build.

[colinl]

That could work. Thanks. I will give it a go.

[colinl]

OK, this is working well for me:

1. The .node-red folder is under git control (or whichever folder contains the node-red flows file)
2. Add node-red-mcu as a git submodule under .node-red
3. Copy node-red-mcu/manifest.json into .node-red and git add it
4. Edit manifest.json to allow building from the .node-red folder. For example

   {
   "include": [
       "./node-red-mcu/manifest_host.json"
   ],
   "modules": {
       "*": [
           "./node-red-mcu/main",
           {
               "source": "./flows",
               "transform": "nodered2mcu"
           }
       ]
   },
   "preload": [
       "flows"
   ]
   }

5. If you have any additional installed nodes then create a folder contrib-nodes and put the manifest files for those in that folder. For example, I use node-red-contrib-pid and node-red-contrib-timeprop so I create files manifest-node-red-contrib-pid.manifest and similar for timeprop. In the pid manifest is this, which includes the contrib node source from the node_modules folder

   {
   "modules": {
       "*": "../node_modules/node-red-contrib-pid/pid"
   },
   "preload": "pid"
   }

6. Git add those manifest files
7. Add them into the include section of the main manifest file, so mine now reads

   "include": [
       "./node-red-mcu/manifest_host.json",
       "./contrib-nodes/manifest-node-red-contrib-timeprop.json",
       "./contrib-nodes/manifest-node-red-contrib-pid.json"
   ],

   Now everything is controlled by git, and the project can be built from the .node-red folder using something like mcconfig -d -m -p esp/nodemcu

[phoddie]

Glad that works. What you describe all makes good sense. Thanks for sharing the details. That will be helpful for others.