Getting a quick ESP8266 build environment
The ESp8266 is currently my favourite toy right now. I’ve mostly been using NodeMCU, but also experimented with Micropython.
I started thinking about making a development environment for the device that was easy to replicate.
There are a couple of ways to do this. First is ansible/puppet/chef or similar systems to setup all the packages. This is okay, but it gives no isolation - and when you cross compile for different devices, this can make things complicated and lead to unexpected results.
The others are Vagrant, and Docker - vagrant creates a VM - a whole OS on a virtual machine, and Docker - a container - which isolates the processes and filesystems.
I made a docker image for building micropython - which I’ve added in a branch of the micropython https://github.com/orionrobots/micropython/tree/master/esp8266. It’s not ideal - it’s a slow build, and probably makes a larger image than is needed.
I also asked on twitter to see who had done something similar:
@orionrobots @ESP8266 @micropython Vagrant box: https://t.co/oBkqis80Js. Just run: `PROJECT=micropython vagrant up`
— slaff2 (@slaff2) December 3, 2015
These should make it easier for someone who is using micropython on the esp8266 and wants to contribute/make fixes or changes to it to get started building, so they can get to the bit they meant to - testing and building their changes, not just trying to get it to compile.