Does not work with arduino

[JelleB]

Somewhere along the line of development, the requirement to built the firmware with plain arduino got lost, I think that is a very bad thing. The board is based on the Arduino due not only because those designs were available, but presumably also because Arduino is a very low threshold entry into programming. That makes it very easy for unskilled enthusiasts to compile and change Arduino programs themselves, but also to contribute those changes back to the community. I count 11 hurdles to take (some with substeps a) to e)) to built this firmware. In contrast, to compile Marlin, you only have to download the source and click on the .ino. Now tell me, which firmware is easier to hack, and which one will get the most contributions? Don't get me wrong, it is very understandable why you'd rather go to eclipse if you are doing this fulltime. There is nothing wrong with that. What is wrong, is that in doing so, apparently support for compiling with Arduino got lost. For any OSS project to succeed, you need mindshare. Arduino is a very successful project, just because of that mindshare. Basing the duet on the due was a very good move. Moving away from arduino for the firmware negates all that. So, please add a .ino that allows you to compile with arduino?

[RRP-support]

Hi JelleB Thanks for the feedback. We are aware this is an issue, and are working to get the firmware compiling again under Arduino IDE. The main problem has been recent changes to the Arduino IDE; it was compiling, but now we need to make further changes to get it working again. Ian RepRapPro tech support

[chrishamm]

The main reason RepRapFirmware does not compile with the stock Arduino IDE lies in its dependency to third-party libraries, which are still way easier to integrate in Eclipse. Please keep in mind that different libraries like LWIP and parts of the ASF, which are not included in the original Arduino package, are needed to get the Ethernet interface working and to utilise other features the rather new SAM8XE 32-bit processor. Marlin OTOH does not have such dependencies, however its functionality and power is very limited compared to RepRapFirmware, which also runs on an entirely differnet architecture (AVR vs. ARM).

Besides, since Arduino v1.5.8 the Arduino Due package had been dropped from the core package and they did not provide a nice way to integrate other Arduino-compatible boards from their Boards Manager. Fortunately they've added a new way to do so to their v1.6.4 release, so I will write a new package file for the Duet over the next few days and update the build instructions once again. I hope this will simplify the build process, and hopefully restore the ability to compile the firmware via the Arduino IDE. I can't guarantee I'll get the latter part working, though, but I'll definitely try.

[chrishamm]

Alright, meanwhile I can say that this would be mission impossible! The reason is that the networking stack (LWIP) has a too complex directory structure for Arduino. It cannot be built with Arduino IDE, although all other libraries can be built just nicely.

Thanks to the changes introduced by Arduino 1.6.4, we can now at least provide the Duet files as an individual boards package (see https://github.com/chrishamm/RepRapFirmware/tree/dev/Hardware). However, a build script is needed to compile the firmware due to the problem I mentioned above. I've updated 3D-ES's Bash script to take care of the required changes (see https://github.com/chrishamm/RepRapFirmware/blob/dev/3d-es-make.sh), however for the moment it cannot be used under Windows, but will work on Linux and most likely on OS X.

I will come up with a more generic approach (some kind of Makefile) in near future, but even then the user will have to install Make on a Windows environment (presuming it isn't already installed by VC++ or so). I wish there was a way to use Arduino IDE to build it entirely, however as I already explained this is (currently) not possible. Sorry!