ESP8266 Community Forum

- Tue Jun 06, 2017 3:17 am #66793 This is a problem you will never be able to solve in IT. With every new version there is a chance of breaking old software. Look at MickeySoft: macros that were working with the last version won't run in the current one; seen that often enough. Thats the cause why committed developers / companies supply various versions of there library, code whatever for different versions of the target sw.

With every new version of sdk, compiler etc. if you adapt to the latest version you have to decide if you put in effort to be backward compatible, not everyone may like to follow your update pace, or you might consider offering your examples for each version of arduino esp8266 core, even RCs until the final release.

no rant, attack, etc. just my thoughts

- Wed Jun 07, 2017 4:21 pm #66877

<...>Still doesn't change the fact the RC is just that: "RC". There hasn't been a release for almost a year now and no word from developers on this issue. For part-time hobbyists, that means it's frozen.

So, I went up to your blog\ to get an impression of your mind-set; nice blog by the way. Obviously, your concern over the RC is not a mindless rant; your blog shows an informed, articulate individual. So...

I am just going to disagree about the RC being "frozen" and agree with you that things just are moving slower than you or I (and likely many others) would prefer. On the other end of tbe world, ArduinoIDE is moving faster than I would prefer.

I once managed a group of 10 JAVA programmers many years ago and the tools and libraries often changed more than once per week. As the product was commercial, strict change controls were in place: I and other managers wasted lot of time reading, analyzing, testing, and doing critical analysis and risk management on every single patch. There is much truth in the programming equivalence of the expression, "The Devil you know..." At some point, one must freeze the development environment (and bugs) and move forward with the real work.

As an enthusiast, a programmer, and a writer I feel that there is simply no need to have a "constantly evolving" product in the educational or hobby space... "RC" is good 'nuff in my opinion. The key is to identify and comment all work-around methods in the source and also to provide the reader with the IDE version, 3rd party library versions, and ESP8266 core date/version. I even move many libraries into the sketch folder to protect from vendor library updates. Then, I publish and move on. Some of my published projects require Arduino IDE version 1.0.6 of they will fail to compile. And no, I do not go back and edit/fix things that do not work on newer tools! That would just make me too busy to do anything new.

Ray

- Mon Sep 04, 2017 1:17 am #69720 Not dead, just lacking in developers, because most of the attention is focused on the ESP32.
For hobby and stuff, the ESP32 is more interesting.
Personally, I consider a $4 gap per device to make the ESP8266 still more interesting than the ESP32 (200 devices around the house = $800 difference).

To anyone reading this, please keep in mind that the core is developed and maintained by volunteers. I'm currently putting forth some personal effort to clean up some of the 1000+ issues currently open. I apologize in advance if I make some hard choices...

As for a new release, I suspect we're waiting on a critical fix from espressif: the infamous ARP bug. I'd love to see the channel announcement bug fixed also, but whatever we can get. Espressif is also likely focused on the ESP32 IDF, rather than on the ESP8266 SDK, so getting fixes from them is also being glacial.

- Tue Sep 05, 2017 1:35 am #69747 Pre release 2.4.0-rc1 (end of May 2017)

https://github.com/esp8266/Arduino/releases/tag/2.4.0-rc1

Look at ,and listen to 'the guy with the swiss accent' :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URr5HuVMcsA&feature=youtu.be

Documentation (PDF)
https://media.readthedocs.org/pdf/arduino-esp8266/docs_to_readthedocs/arduino-esp8266.pdf