vim-arduino-cli

Vim plugin for compiling, uploading, and debugging arduino sketches. It makes use of Arduino's commandline interface tool (in alpha).

This project is heavily inspired by Steven Arcangeli's vim-arduino which uses the Arduino IDE's command line interface.

I opted for this new approach for two major reasons:

1. It is naturally headless (no need to install Xvfb)
2. Although arduino-cli is in alpha, the Arduino team has indicated that they would be replacing the internals of their IDE with it

Table of Contents

• Installation
• Platforms
• Configuration
  • Status Line
• License

Installation

vim-arduino-cli works with Pathogen

cd ~/.vim/bundle/
git clone https://github.com/ecarlson94/vim-arduino-cli

and vim-plug

Plug 'ecarlson94/vim-arduino-cli'

You also need to install the arduino-cli (version 0.14 or newer) and make sure the arduino-cli command is in your PATH.

Platforms

vim-arduino-cli should work with no special configuration on Linux and Mac. I have not tested on Windows, but have heard that it works via WSL. See #4 for discussion.

Configuration

The docs have detailed information about configuring vim-arduino-cli here.

The main commands you will want to use are:

• :ArduinoChooseBoard - Select the type of board from a list.
• :ArduinoChooseProgrammer - Select the programmer from a list.
• :ArduinoChoosePort - Select the serial port from a list.
• :ArduinoLibSearch - Search for a library to install.
• :ArduinoLibInstall - Install a specific library.
• :ArduinoCompile - Build the sketch.
• :ArduinoUpload - Build and upload the sketch.
• :ArduinoAttach - Connect to the board for debugging over a serial port.
• :ArduinoUploadAndAttach - Build, upload, and connect for debugging.
• :ArduinoInfo - Display internal information. Useful for debugging issues with vim-arduino.

To make easy use of these, you may want to bind them to a key combination. You can put the following in .vim/ftplugin/arduino.vim:

nnoremap <buffer> <leader>as :ArduinoLibSearch<CR>
nnoremap <buffer> <leader>ai :ArduinoLibInstall<CR>
nnoremap <buffer> <leader>am :ArduinoCompile<CR>
nnoremap <buffer> <leader>au :ArduinoUpload<CR>
nnoremap <buffer> <leader>ad :ArduinoUploadAndAttach<CR>
nnoremap <buffer> <leader>ab :ArduinoChooseBoard<CR>
nnoremap <buffer> <leader>ap :ArduinoChooseProgrammer<CR>

If you wish to run these commands in tmux/screen/some other location, you can make use of vim-slime:

let g:arduino_use_slime = 1

Status Line

If you want to add the board type to your status line, it's easy with the following:

" my_file.ino [arduino:avr:uno]
function! MyStatusLine()
  return '%f [' . g:arduino_board . ']'
endfunction
setl statusline=%!MyStatusLine()

Or if you want something a bit fancier that includes serial port info:

" my_file.ino [arduino:avr:uno] [arduino:usbtinyisp] (/dev/ttyACM0:9600)
function! MyStatusLine()
  let port = arduino#GetPort()
  let line = '%f [' . g:arduino_board . '] [' . g:arduino_programmer . ']'
  if !empty(port)
    let line = line . ' (' . port . ')'
  endif
  return line
endfunction
setl statusline=%!MyStatusLine()

Note: if you are using the 'airline' plugin for the status line, you can display this custom status part instead of the filename extension with:

autocmd BufNewFile,BufRead *.ino let g:airline_section_x='%{MyStatusLine()}'

License

Everything is under the MIT License except for the wonderful syntax file, which was created by Johannes Hoff and copied from vim.org and is under the Vim License.