Feature Request : custom partitions.csv in sketch folder

[luc-github]

Hi,
Sorry if this has been discussed before but I did not saw it

Now there are a lot boards and lot of features that affect partition definition: WIFI/BT/SPIFFS/FAT/OTA and of course flash size

So it is hard to list all possible partitions in arduino menu , sorry I do not use platformIO.

For example currently some board like 'esp32-gateway' has even no choice to select the partition kind - so no way to get it working with BT and WiFi and BT easily,
On my side I use different boards for different purpose and change manually default.csv each time I open a project is little bit hard

Would it be possible to put a custom partition.csv file in sketch directory in a partition subdirectory? this one would be taken ifcustom partition` is selected in menu, so it add only one menu on all boards
this would make the partition selection really flexible if default one do not fit the needs

I see 3 impacts (hope not missing some) :
1 - the max file upload size
this should be taken from app partition size (not sure how)

2 - the path in platform.txt
recipe.objcopy.eep.pattern={tools.gen_esp32part.cmd} -q "{runtime.platform.path}/tools/partitions/{build.partitions}.csv" "{build.path}/{build.project_name}.partitions.bin" to always use the csv present in {build.path}/{build.project_name}/partition/partition.csv so before need to copy the right one

3 - Impact on upload tool like mkspiffs and flashfatfs
no idea as I do not use them

Not sure it is easy to implement but gain would be big IMHO, including maintenance as no need to maintain lot of entries

[me-no-dev]

yeah... I have been thinking of this some time back as well :) but did not find a way to do it. I think we need a different way to handle all those boards... I have not found a fool-proof way for that either (yet)

[luc-github]

Unfortunatly I do not know well the process build but if you have some direction to give I would be happy to help
I am guessing modifications involve gen_esp32part to be smarter like always copy the csv file defined in menu to build directory, if file name is custom, then use the one in sketch directory, if none then use default one.
For maximum storage (upload.maximum_size) I cannot see if variable could be modified on the fly to fit the app partition size but the check could be done by esptool

for uploadtools I think adding a parameter to using path to partition.csv to get start address would be the way to do

just my though - would be happy if this happen as board number is growing and already hard to maintain

[me-no-dev]

it will not really be able to work this way. The IDE build process goes through a few steps and I do not really know if we can plug in between to add a csv in the sketch folder and that then be in the build. gen_esp32part is not to be modified ;) it's an IDF tool that should stay as is :) Maybe we can raise this to the official Arduino folks and see if they have an idea how we can do this. I would also like to have a small UI tool for generating proper partition schemes, else users will make mistakes :)

[luc-github]

Yes would be too easy if that way ;)
I wanted to work on such tool but currently I use excel ...
I remember I read process has some hook place. Will check that

[luc-github]

here the hooks location some in core some in IDE but not sure it is enough : https://github.com/arduino/Arduino/search?q=hooks&unscoped_q=hooks
in core:
hooks.savehex.presavehex
hooks.savehex.postsavehex

I remember before there were more hooks: https://github.com/arduino/Arduino/wiki/Arduino-IDE-1.5-3rd-party-Hardware-specification#pre-and-post-build-hooks-since-ide-165
but I do not see them in code

[stale]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.

[luc-github]

Stale do not close me - Thanks ^_^

[stale]

[STALE_SET] This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed in 14 days if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.

[luc-github]

no no, please keep open, thank you

[stale]

[STALE_CLR] This issue has been removed from the stale queue. Please ensure activity to keep it openin the future.