I have (10) Windows 10 notebooks that I use with students. I would like to install a few libraries for each notebook but I can’t access the user’s library folders via windows explorer (permissions issue I guess - I’m a teacher and not part of the IT department that has full permissions). I think I already know the answer but I’ll try anyways: is there any way of deploying libraries to users on Win10 machines? At least one of the libraries has to be downloaded from a website, and for those that don’t teach 14 year olds, it’s one more slight complication that I’d like to avoid. Life will be better for me if I can get all the libraries on each notebook before the next class starts.
If I were to reinstall the Arduino IDE, is there any way to control where the user libraries are stored? I don’t recall seeing an option for this when installing.
shmish:
If I were to reinstall the Arduino IDE, is there any way to control where the user libraries are stored? I don’t recall seeing an option for this when installing.
User libraries are stored under {sketchbook folder}/libraries. You can set the location of {sketchbook folder} in the Arduino IDE at File > Preferences > Sketchbook location.
You do have the option of installing the libraries to the libraries subfolder of the Arduino IDE installation folder. That is not recommended because everything in the Arduino IDE installation folder will be lost when you update to a new version of the Arduino IDE but as long as you're aware of that it might be a reasonable approach in certain cases.
As a hobbyist, we're used to having less strict time constraints than they do in an educational setting. Even if someone only has an hour a week free to tinker, if they don't get it this week they'll come back to it the next week and the week after until they get it. In a classroom setting you might have 45 minutes of actual time to work, during which time the planned lesson must be completed. There are only so many days in the semester and if one lesson ends up taking an extra day then something else is lost. Especially in the very early stages, it makes sense to make sure the students have the required libraries pre-installed so that they can get right to the programming and electronics part of the lesson. Yes, learning to install libraries is an important thing, but it can certainly introduce a serious "Murphy factor", which could end up derailing a whole lesson because one student hit a snag.
Thanks, I forgot to look to see if there was a portable version. I think that is the best path forward, if I can get enough USB drives. I can then easily and quickly copy libraries, and students will always have their sketches regardless of what computer they use. I will test this out on Monday.
pert - so true about class time. I’m constantly amazed at how well my students do given my resources, but installing a few libraries will almost certainly take most of an hour with lots of kids twiddling their thumbs asking: what’s github, do I need an account, where did it download, githab.com doesn’t work for me, I can’t connect to the internet, etc.
I think I have this running for Windows but I'm a bit stuck on Linux. I have two computers in the classroom that are running Linux. I downloaded the linux archive but I don't know what the actual executable file is. I think the linux download includes only an installer. Do you know how to run a portable version of Arduino IDE in linux/ubuntu?
shmish:
I downloaded the linux archive but I don't know what the actual executable file is.
It's the file named arduino in the root of the Arduino IDE installation folder. That's actually a bash script that runs the Java file.
shmish:
I think the linux download includes only an installer.
It isn't really necessary to run the installation script. It doesn't do much.
shmish:
Do you know how to run a portable version of Arduino IDE in linux/ubuntu?
I just downloaded the IDE, extracted the downloaded file, created the portable folder in the Arduino IDE installation folder, and it worked fine for me in portable mode after that. If that's not working for you, please provide some details.
That's strange. The official version of the Arduino IDE uses its own bundled JRE so the system-wide JRE should not affect it. Are you running the official Arduino IDE on the Linux machines or an installation from a package manager (e.g. apt-get), which are modified in unspecified ways by random people?