Error Installing ESP8266 with GitHub-Actions and Arduino-CLI

[Tanvie]

Trying to use GitHub actions CI to run Arduino-CLI commands for compiling and creating bin files for Arduino.

The code is intended for use with the ESP8266 module. However, after adding the ESP8266 module's additional URL to the configuration file and updating the index, it gives the following error:

The following instructions are used to add the board URL and update the index file in the CI file:

[per1234]

Hi @Tanvie. When you are using the --additional-urls flag to provide a 3rd party package index URL, you must add this flag to every command that relies on that URL, which includes the arduino-cli core install command. Since you did not provide the URL for the esp8266:esp8266 platform's package index to the arduino-cli core install command, only the platforms provided by the primary package index (e.g., arduino:avr) were available to the command, so this error is the normal and expected behavior.

You can fix this by providing the flag to the command:

- name: Install ESP8266
  run: arduino-cli core install esp8266:esp8266 --additional-urls https://arduino.esp8266.com/stable/package_esp8266com_index.json -v

Or you might find it more convenient to add the URL to the board_manager.additional_urls configuration key after which it will be set for all subsequent commands without the need for the --additional-urls flag:

- name: Add ESP8266 package index URL
  run: arduino-cli config add board_manager.additional_urls https://arduino.esp8266.com/stable/package_esp8266com_index.json