This repo is based on github/esp8266/arduino for code source files and also www.arduinesp.com for toolchain
This is a windows only release. To make a linux release, you would need to compile the linux toolchain and install it in a different folder under tools.
##Instructions to install
In your My Documents/Arduino folder
make a new folder named hardware
(if you don't already have one)
Then clone the repo into the hardware folder, or download the zip and unzip into the hardware folder
Download the official Arduino IDE 1.6.2 and install it (if you have 1.6.0 or 1.6.1 it should also work, and you can skip the next 2 steps)
If you have just done an clean install of 1.6.x... Run the Official IDE, (first run seems to take some time, I suspect its building a file cache)
Quit the official IDE as the first run doesn't seem to be able to see comm ports correctly
Restart the official IDE
Looking in the boards menu and you will see the Generic ESP8266 - select this
Under the programmer menu, select esptool (as the default appears to be no selection, which causes issues for upload)
Compile upload and enjoy ;-)
##Notes
Upload uses esptool.exe, which doesnt seem to report upload errors very well.
Each upload consists of 2 separate files. esptool.exe prints about 20 dots as the first file is uploaded and around 100 dots when the second file is uploaded. If after the upload the esp8266 doesnt seem to be doing what you expect, I'd recommend that you try uploading again
Also not, power supply issues seem to be common during uploads. i.e so although the esp8266 may work fine with the original firmware (AT command set), you may not be supplying the board with enough power to program it.