List of wants for Arduino IDE

I love the Arduino platform, but it definitely has some warts. Especially on the Linux version. Linux is all about hackers and coders, so a large portion of the Arduino audience uses Linux. All of these criticisms are based on running the Arduino 1.0.1 IDE on Fedora 17.

  1. Add Serial.printf()
    • printf() is a core part of a good C platform, and any good programming language
    • Having do multiple Serial.print() statements to print out some static text and then variable is a pain.
    • sprintf() is available for AVR, we just need to wrap it with the Serial object.
  2. Automatically open serial monitor after upload
    • I commonly have the serial monitor open to look at output. Hitting upload closes the window to complete the upload. A checkbox for "open Serial monitor after upload" would really cut down having to click two icons for every upload.
  3. Decouple the build process from the IDE
    • It would be great to have standard way to compile/upload to a board. This would allow easier use of an external text editor.
    • Vi/Emacs anyone?
    • There are some Makefiles out there that handle this, but none as clean as the IDE..
  4. IDE support for multiple simultaneous Arduinos
    • Working on a serial project to get two Arduinos to talk via serial required me to have two IDE windows open: client and server. Whenever I would change the board or USB port for one IDE window, it would change the other. This makes it very difficult to work on a two Arduinos as the same time.
  5. Auto detect serial ports on the fly
    • If I load the IDE before plugging in my Arduino it won't see the serial port in the menu. The only way to get it to pick up the port is to restart the IDE.
    • Often my Arduino Leonardo will switch from /dev/ttyACM0 to /dev/ttyACM1. When this happens the IDE doesn't detect that the port has changed, and the only way to switch to /dev/ttyACM1 is to restart the IDE.
  6. A better editor font
    • There are much better code friendly fonts that are easier to read. Can we add the ability to change the font?
    • Why are we not using anti-aliased fonts? Every modern OS uses them now.
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