Often when I start the IDE I see a flash of a message that looks like files are being downloaded.
How can I stop this and have the software ask me if it is OK to download files?
Or how can I do the file download manually?
John
Hi @JohnRob. On every startup, the IDE downloads the index files used by the Boards Manager, Library Manager, and WiFi101 / WiFiNINA Firmware Updater. This allows it to list the currently available boards platforms, libraries, and firmwares.
In addition to that, it will periodically download and install new versions of the tools used to detect serial ports (serial-discovery) and network ports (mdns-discovery) of Arduino boards, to provide communication between the Serial Monitor and the boards (serial-monitor), and to preprocess Arduino sketches into C++ (ctags)[GitHub - arduino/ctags: A mix of ctags and anjuta-tags for the perfect C++ ctags).
This isn't supported. You could surely block the IDE from accessing the Internet via external means (e.g., simply don't put the application on your firewall allow list), but you can see these downloads provide some quite useful capabilities and you would be missing out on those if you block the IDE from downloading the files.
You are welcome to submit a request to the developers for such a setting, but maybe it would be better first for us to explore the reason why you could want to do such a thing. Are these downloads causing you some problem or inconvenience?
The library index is here:
http://downloads.arduino.cc/libraries/library_index.json
The primary package index is here:
https://downloads.arduino.cc/packages/package_index.json
You may have some additional package indexes specified in the "Additional Boards Manager URLs" field of your IDE preferences.
The firmware index is here:
https://downloads.arduino.cc/arduino-fwuploader/boards/module_firmware_index.json
The serial-discovery, mdns-discovery, serial-monitor, and ctags downloads are also listed in the primary package index:
Hi,
The reason is simply security. I realize the downloads occurring right at startup, however I would feel better if there was a Yes/No dialog box before downloading. Mostly because they download so fast I can't even read the file names.
If malicious behavior was intended, the IDE would simply ignore that dialog choice and download the files without any visible indication of it happening. So it would only give you a false sense of security.
Sorry I wasn't clear, I didn't think Kicad would be malicious but another program that contained a threat would either run at the same time or perhaps biggy-back.
Note: I am not a windows programmer so I only see what is on the screen and read about some programs that do things I don't understand how they are done.