How to create Extension for Arduino IDE itself?

Development Libraries
1

I want to create some extensions for Arduino IDE (not talking about any hardware extensions or programming of sketches). I am using windows platform.

I found old topic and gone through but it is still unanswered:
Arduino Forum > Using Arduino > Programming Questions > Creating plugin for Arduino IDE

I am sorry if posted on wrong place. Mods - please move or guide me to move to correct section.

Thanks

2

It is possible to create "tools" for the Arduino IDE. You write the tool in Java and then put it in the tools subfolder of the sketchbook folder (File > Preferences > Sketchbook location). After restarting the Arduino IDE, the tool will be available from the Tools menu.

The Arduino IDE comes with an example tool under the tools/Mangler subfolder of the Arduino IDE installation folder. There is also tools/WiFi101.

This is probably the most popular 3rd party tool:

This is the only other one I know of:

Unfortunately, the tools feature is not widely used by the Arduino community and there doesn't seem to be any documentation beyond what's provided by Mangler. The tools system was inherited from the Processing IDE (which was the original base of the Arduino IDE) so you might find some documentation on the Processing website, etc.

3

Thanks Pert for quick response.

I had gone through your suggested path but it seems that Processing IDE has undergone many changes since.

I am basically looking for some quick tweaks that I can add to Arduino IDE itself whereas your suggested path ideally leads to TOOLS which would perform certain tasks on sketches or project. I had come across some reference on Processing IDE and believe that there is some possibility to achieve what i want (but i am still not finished on reading it and experiment it).

Hope to get some progress at earliest.

Thanks

4

If the tools system doesn't meet your needs, you might end up needing to edit the Arduino IDE's source code. You can get it here:

Instructions for building the Arduino IDE from source:

5

Hi pert, Thanks for guidance.

I have followed steps on Building-Arduino wiki but seems I am stuck on ant build/dist part (using Windows Server 2012 R2 OS). I will dig more and share findings asap.

Thanks