Aware that many C or C++ developers work from Windows to program on Rasperry Pi Pico, the Raspberry Pi Foundation launched a Windows installer dedicated to its small microcontroller last weekend.
Make it easier for Windows users to install the toolchain (tool chain) to develop on a Rasperry Pi Pico. This is the goal of the Rasperry Pi Foundation and its new Windows installer dedicated to the microcontroller and other boards based on the RP2040 chip. A tool whose creation required some effort from the group’s engineers, said Gordon Hollingworth, Chief Product Officer at Raspberry Pi.
Creating a Windows installer… a delicate operation
” When we launched Raspberry Pi Pico and its SDK, we assumed that people would be satisfied with a Linux-based toolchain “explained Gordon Hollingworth. ” So we also documented how to set up and run the toolchain on macOS and Windows, for people who wanted to use those platforms.”
“Unfortunately, while installing the SDK on macOS isn’t much different than on Linux, and works almost immediately, installing on Windows is much more difficult. The environment is very different “, he continues.
Visual Studio Code (CS Code) can be problematic
In this case, and as ZDNet points out, it was engineer Nikhil Dabas who took charge of the job. The interested party explains that the Windows installer for Raspberry Pi Pico is ” roughly equivalent to the Pico setup project for Linux systems “. The engineer is also behind a tutorial shared on GitHub to understand how to configure a Raspberry Pi Pico for Windows development using the Visual Studio Code (VS Code) editor offered by Microsoft.
As Gordon Hollingworth points out, Visual Studio Code can, on the other hand, cause problems in some cases, especially for Windows users who have already installed it. A conflict of extensions would be at the origin, but it remains obviously quite simple to settle by means of a clean reinstallation of VS Code via the Windows installer concocted by Nikhil Dabas.
Source : ZDNet / Raspberry Pi Foundation
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