[Suggestion] Improve Library manager

Software Arduino IDE 2.0
1

Dear all,
thanks for your new IDE based on VS... finally a professional tool to develop arduino code!
I suggest you to improve Library Manager:

  1. Search only in the Libraries Title as default - There are a lots of libraries (some obsolete, some great). When you type a keyword in search bar, the results search the key into title and description and it's really hard to find out what you need (and 99% of time you know the name of the library and need to scrool down a lot to find the correct ones).
    For example: I need am OSC library and type OSC as keyword. Most of the results is about Accelerometer and GyrOSCope.
    IMHO the search into other fields like description should be an optional flag.

  2. Implements a filter to show only installed Library.
    Sometimes you need to manage the installed libraries to upgrade or downgrade versions.
    A flag that show the installed library and search on that set will be great!

  3. A side request - often users make their personal modification to an official library to customize or add "private" features. It will be usefull if Arduino IDE can use a local sketch directory like "libs" or "libraries" as local libraries and give priority to the local folder instead have only a one /documents/arduino/libraries. I can do this with Visual Studio Code and Arduino Plugin.

Thanks
Claudio

2 Likes
2

I also think that Claudio's point 2 is very important! I typically take care of the installed libraries and rarely need new libraries. If a new one has to be installed, it is better to import a zip file.

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This missing feature is tracked here:

This is something that will definitely be added in the near future. Even though Arduino IDE 2.x is still not ready to be a complete replacement for the classic Arduino IDE, the Arduino team decided that it was ready enough to make a public beta release in order to allow the whole community to get involved with the testing and development effort, in the spirit of open source.

There is a feature request for this here (Arduino CLI handles all non-GUI related tasks for Arduino IDE 2.x):

4

Hi Pert,
thanks for your reply.
The "Support building libraries with a sketch" issue was opened in 2018.
An user make a pull-request on 28th december 2020... It will be added in next beta?

5

I'd also be very interested in having this feature added.
And as a added bonus, please please support symlinks in the libraries folder.

I see the symlinks are actually working fine. Instead I had this problem: #1257

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This topic was automatically closed 120 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.

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Formal feature request here:

(the feature must be implemented in Arduino CLI, since that is the tool that handles the Library Manager search for Arduino IDE)

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I agree with Claudio. I don't see 2.0 as beta anymore, and having library filters like you have on v1 is very important to be sure you have the latest libraries, or if you need to downgrade any.

At least 2.0 uses the same paths as `1.0, or at least I assume it does based on what's configured in the preferences.txt file so you can use v1 to truly manage your libraries.

Basically whatever features v1 had should also be in v2.

By the way, v2 preferences makes no mention of preferences.txt.
Interestingly enough, when I set preferences in v2 to same sketch root folder as I have for v1, it took on quite a few settings I had for v1 including boards.

Speaking of boards, although V2 seemed to acquire all my board references I had in V1, it doesn't display them in Preferences.

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Definitely. Everyone is welcome to submit code contributions to this free open source project to help attain feature parity. Maybe you would like to help with that? The repository is here:

This is because preferences.txt is not used in any way by Arduino IDE 2.x. Arduino IDE 2.x has a completely new and separate system for storing preferences.

Arduino IDE 2.x will recognize any boards platforms you have installed already. However, the "Additional Boards Manager URLs" preference is still needed for the IDE to know when other versions of those boards platforms are available for update via Boards Manager. So make sure to copy/paste over all your "Additional Boards Manager URLs" from Arduino IDE 1.x.

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Will the v2 IDE have a pop-out window for managing libraries, something similar to v1? The narrow scrolling list looks nice, but it takes a while to find anything in that format due to the long descriptions and the "Install" mouseover prompts. Additionally, libraries that are installed don't appear unless I filter by the specific name. It appears that the narrow list only shows some of the libraries and the rest are left off.

12

Hi @tsmith35. Thanks for your feedback!

I am not aware of any existing plans for such a change.

You are welcome to submit a request to the developers in the project's issue tracker here:

https://github.com/arduino/arduino-ide/issues

I already searched for any existing requests without finding one other than a mention in passing in a closed issue.

You can click and drag on the right border of the side panel that contains the Library Manager view to change its width if you find it to be too narrow.

This bug is being tracked by the Arduino IDE developers here: