Upload button defaulting to "Upload Using Programmer" is not supported

[sstaub]

Describe the problem

There are two Upload-related operations:

• Upload
• Upload Using Programmer

In addition to the menu items (Sketch > Upload / Sketch > Upload Using Programmer) and keyboard shortcuts (Ctrl+U / Ctrl+Shift+U), an upload operation can be triggered by clicking the button on the Arduino IDE toolbar.

Some Arduino boards do not support standard "Upload", so the platform author configured their board definition to do an "Upload Using Programmer" operation when the "Upload" button is clicked. This makes the frequent task of uploading to these boards more convenient for the user than having to use the less accessible menu item.

🐛 Arduino IDE does an "Upload" operation when the button is clicked even when the board is configured for it to trigger an "Upload Using Programmer" operation.

Expected behavior

Arduino IDE does an "Upload Using Programmer" operation on "Upload" button click when the board is configured for that behavior.

Arduino IDE version

7c86f1f

Operating system

All

Operating system version

Any

Additional context

Additional reports:

• Upload does not recognise that a programmer has been selected #1640
• Arduino IDE 2 not program MCUs Atmel and Arduino IDE 1.8.13 program #1323
• "A programmer is required to upload" error when uploading #2276
• Unable to load sketches using Arduino as ISP #2460
• v 0.1.0 problems with 3rd party cores (MegaCoreX) arduino-pro-ide#306
• Cant upload with Arduino IDE 2.0.0 MCUdude/MiniCore#233
• https://forum.arduino.cc/t/strange-issue-uploading-code-using-updi-megatinycore/945896
• https://forum.arduino.cc/t/attiny85-wont-program/1043246
• https://forum.arduino.cc/t/cant-program-attiny85-with-attinycore-v1-5-2/701346
• https://forum.arduino.cc/t/uploading-to-attiny85-gives-error-a-programmer-is-required-to-upload/1065582
• https://forum.arduino.cc/t/usbasp-works-well-on-ide-1-8-19-but-it-does-not-work-on-ide-2-0-3/1085285
• https://forum.arduino.cc/t/arduino-ide2-0-3-cant-find-programmer/1081331
• https://forum.arduino.cc/t/cannot-upload-to-arduino/1117541/10
• https://forum.arduino.cc/t/where-to-locate-h-files-in-ide-2/1138746/18
• https://forum.arduino.cc/t/a-programmer-is-required-to-upload-for-attiny402/1147172
• https://forum.arduino.cc/t/i-was-trying-to-code-on-a-vega-aries-v3-and-got-this-error-messa-a-programmer-is-required-to-upload/1195228
• https://forum.arduino.cc/t/failure-programming-attiny85-using-uno-r3/1216658
• https://forum.arduino.cc/t/tiny-avr-programmer-not-found/1216550/16
• https://forum.arduino.cc/t/a-programmer-is-required-to-upload/1234159

Issue checklist

• I searched for previous reports in the issue tracker
• I verified the problem still occurs when using the latest nightly build
• My report contains all necessary details

[ubidefeo]

@sstaub
Thank you for being so prompt with filing this issue.
It slipped through the cracks, like other ones I'm sure you'll find :)

[per1234]

The problem is the Arduino Pro IDE doesn't support this behavior:
https://arduino.github.io/arduino-cli/dev/platform-specification/#upload-using-programmer-by-default

If the upload.protocol property is not defined for a board, the Arduino IDE's "Upload" process will use the same behavior as "Upload Using Programmer". This is convenient for boards which only support uploading via programmer.

If you look at sstaub's screenshot from arduino/arduino-pro-ide#306, you can see the FQBN of the selected board has the bootloader custom board option set to no_bootloader. For that configuration, the platform author intentionally did not define an upload.protocol property because a standard "Upload" would not be useful for a board with no bootloader, and thus it is convenient to give the "Upload" button the "Upload Using Programmer" behavior, which is how the Arduino IDE works:
https://github.com/MCUdude/MegaCoreX/blob/v1.0.4/megaavr/boards.txt#L151-L167

[kittaakos]

Arduino IDE does an "Upload Using Programmer" operation on "Upload" button click when the board is configured for that behavior.

Do you have any pointers on how IDE2 should know whether the board is configured for that behavior?

Here are a few ideas:

• Should IDE2 try with upload using a programmer first; if it fails on the CLI side with a specific error, it retries with an upload.
• Will there be a dedicated CLI API to query this info from?
• Should IDE2 sniff the boardDetails#buildProperties (boards.txt) data and look for a particular pattern to get this info?

Thanks!

[AntonEstrela]

As I understand from this post on the forum https://forum.arduino.cc/t/add-dedicated-upload-using-programmer-button/625370/2,
The IDE2 should check the boards.txt file and if upload.protocol is not defined it should try to upload using programmer

[cmaglie]

@kittaakos
you may check the error's details field coming back from the Upload gRPC call, if it is a ProgrammerIsRequiredForUploadError the IDE should silently try the upload again with the "Upload using programmer".

[giacomocusinato]

Resolved in #2500 and published with IDE 2.3.3