Please add support for RPi Pico (RP2040)

[harryjph]

Please could you add support for the new RPi Pico (RP2040 MCU)?

It is a Cortex M0+ chip but I don't think any of the existing platforms cover it as it's the first RPi to not support Linux (out of the box, at least...).

Board Datasheet
MCU Datasheet
C/C++ SDK Documentation

Related topic on PlatformIO Community Forum https://community.platformio.org/t/raspberry-pi-rp2040-microcontroller-pio-support-when/18679

[ivankravets]

Could you move this issue to https://github.com/raspberrypi/pico-sdk? Or, as minimum, duplicate it. Thanks.

PlatformIO is open source platform, so, anyone can contribute with own dev-platform. Let's wait when @raspberrypi team provide official integration of RP2040 for PlatformIO.

/cc @liamfraser, @kilograham

[blackketter]

I'm trying to get my head around how this works, long term.

I assume that the RP2040 would be added as a new platform and the pico-sdk would be a new framework.

The Arduino team has stated that they've already started adding RP2040 chip with the Arduino ecosystem, which would be another another framework.

Finally, the RPi Pico is the first of many RP2040-based boards that have already been announced, so those would need to be added too, on an ongoing basis.

So... In the mean time, what help is needed to get this going?

[Spongman]

Let's wait when @raspberrypi team provide official integration of RP2040 for PlatformIO.

I don't believe this is something we would do, ... Seems more like a job for the PlatformIO devs

this finger-pointing graph has a cycle.

does this mean PlatformIO won't support the RPi pico?

[maxgerhardt]

I have experience with custom platforms since I've developed https://github.com/maxgerhardt/platform-w60x (yes it's WIP but it can successfully compile the Arduino core, the native WinnerMicro W60x (vendor) SDK, has the openocd upload tools and has debugging), so I might give this a shot, too. Since the Raspberry Pi team per quote above isn't thinking about PlatformIO support, we have to get our hands dirty ourselves.

On a sidenote, if the platform is well-developed, it might soon well be the standard of Raspberry Pi Pico C/C++ programming. The SDK installation + VSCode setup process is lengthy and includes a lot of working in the shell, exporting environment variables, freaking compiling OpenOCD yourself and creating the VSCode configurations yourself, The build system is CMake and this is a thing new users will have to learn to configure too if they're unfamiliar with it. Just listen to https://youtu.be/cVHCllbN3bQ?t=846 about how this works out for some users.

If this is in PlatformIO, it's going to be a one-click installation / "create new Pico project" and PlatformIO will download and install everything, and users can use the familiar library management and platformio.ini configs, unified across pretty much all of PlatformIO, instead of CMake configs.

@ivankravets what do you think about a user-developed platform after the responses in the linked pico-sdk issue?

[ivankravets]

the build system is CMake and this is a thing new users will have to learn to configure too if they're unfamiliar with it

Yes, you are right. The main problem here is CMake that has a limited API (see https://gitlab.kitware.com/cmake/cmake/-/issues/20463) if you decide to automate the build process. What is more, we even not saying anything about its complex syntax. We have a totally different vision on how embedded development workflow should look, and we do not agree that every embedded developer should learn these new build systems and their syntaxes (Make, CMake, Ninja, etc). Build tools change very often. That was the reason why we didn't re-invent wheels, and use industry-leading SCons build engine based on the native Python interpreter.

what do you think about a user-developed platform

It does not mean that we don't want to provide integration for Raspberry Pi Pico. PlatformIO.Org is an open-source project, and everyone can contribute. We work on community requests and report every month what we did for the PlatformIO.Org project. You can check reports at https://piolabs.com/blog/news/

If we talk about PlatformIO.Org, PlatformIO Core is our main priority, the second is maintaining what we did before for the last 6 years, and the last (if we have spare time for OSS) we work on the community requests related to 3rd party hardware and software products.

RPi SDK is based on CMake that didn't have a good API to export build metadata. What does it mean? It means, that you need to manually reproduce the whole build workflow using PlatformIO Build System API (based on SCons) and replicate everything that CMake does. A few problems:

• The only RPi team releases a new version of their SDK - you will need to re-evaluate the whole build chain and apply all changes (sometimes it can take weeks, ESP-IDF is a good example)
• You will always receive bad feedback from the community that "there is a new version of SDK "X" and why PlatformIO does not support it".
• The only you start doing some work WITHOUT support from the original hardware/software vendor - you will be responsible for everything that you do. It means user complaints, criticism, and etc.

---

We already passed this way. There is no gratitude here. The ONLY ONE reasonable way to solve this issue is to create a joint value proposition with both parties. We already contacted the RPi Trading team and have not received an answer yet. We will keep you updated.

Happy coding with PlatformIO! 😊

Regards,
Your friends at PlatformIO Labs

[blackketter]

Thank you, @ivankravets, for the thorough explanation! I really hope that the Raspberry Pi team can support PlatformIO, it would really lower the barrier to entry for getting folks started with developing on the Pico.

[Spongman]

to solve this issue is to create a joint value proposition with both parties

yay! 👍

However we are not going to work on this ourselves.

😢

[jhmaloney]

One approach would be to wait until Arduino releases their framework for the RP2040, then integrate that into PlatformIO. Since the MicroBlocks virtual machine depends on many of the standard Arduino API's, that approach would be ideal for us. (We already use PlatformIO to build for several dozen boards).

I've just installed the pico-sdk and its workflow is complex and cumbersome, as others have pointed out. What I love about PlatformIO is how easy it is. and how it manages all the tools, frameworks, and libraries for you. To add a new board, I typically just add a few lines to my platformio.ini file and PlatformIO installs the entire toolchain, framework, and libraries. I waste zero time setting up my workflow for the new board so I can focus on the stuff that actually matters.

I'm messing around with the pico-sdk to get a head start, but I will switch to the Arduino framework as soon as it's released. And, with luck, PlatformIO support for the Arduino framework will follow soon thereafter. :-) :-)

[Wiz-IO]

just experiment as beginning...
https://github.com/Wiz-IO/wizio-pico