MPLAB now in the cloud

[Mr Smiley]

 From Hackaday:
<https://www.microchip.com/mplab/mplab-xpress>

[donotdespisethesnake]

Here comes the subscription model?

[Bruce Abbott]

Time to load MPLABX on my PC, up to the point where I could start working an existing project - 120 seconds.

Time to open MPLAB Xpress in Firefox, and start working on same project - 6 seconds.

[mikeselectricstuff]

Time to load MPLABX on my PC, up to the point where I could start working an existing project - 120 seconds.

Time to open MPLAB Xpress in Firefox, and start working on same project - 6 seconds.

So they sould be working on making the native MPLABX less piss-poor rather than jumping on the Cloud bandwagon

[Ian.M]

If they make it available to large companies and academic institutions to run on a local server, I would expect a lot of takeup.  However Microchip's track record of running individual session based web services isn't at all good.  Just look at the clusterf--k they've made of their forum for the last five years!

[Karel]

Time to load MPLABX on my PC, up to the point where I could start working an existing project - 120 seconds.

I guess there's something wrong with your pc. Here it takes 12 seconds.
And no, I'm not using an SSD. But I do use ext4 as filesystem.

[neslekkim]

but it requires Java installed locally

[Howardlong]

My thoughts from a post on their forum:

Just tried it with a Curiosity board. There seem to be connectivity problems in some scenarios between the USB shim .jnlp and the cloud app itself. When it works, sometimes the cloud app and the USB .jnlp get confused and the app seems to think there are more than one debugger at which point it won't debug and you have to restart.
 
Uploading new firmware to hardware debuggers is painfully slow.
 
I can't work out how to single step at instruction level.
 
The MCC is a bolted on afterthought, and it shows. I had to go through the nonsense of downloading an updated JRE to get that to work. For some reason any JRE beyond 8.45 won't install on my Windows 10 laptop, but that's another story. Essentially, having to have any fat clients like the MCC or the USB .jnlps largely negate the whole point of having it as a cloud app, although technically I can see why you need to do it for the hardware debuggers.
 
Having said that, I _really_ like the the simplified UI. MPLAB X has far too much noise in the UI, ie rarely used stuff in the menus that are over prominent nonsense getting in the way of the frequently used items that are hidden away. for example, how many times do you need to use the Refactor menu compare to wanting to add a watch item? 1:200 perhaps? In many ways it's the UI that MPLAB X always should have been.
 
Edit: I agree, apart from the hardware debugging/programming, the compiling etc is fast.

[Howardlong]

Here comes the subscription model?

It's already there if you have a Std or Pro compiler licences, although at least they don't stop working after your subscription ends: you can only use the Std/Pro features on compilers released at the time that your sub was still valid. Therefore, I don't renew my subscription(s) until I find there's a device or facility I'm using that needs it. My three current Pro subscription lapsed in June last year, and so far have had no need to renew.

[Howardlong]

If they make it available to large companies and academic institutions to run on a local server, I would expect a lot of takeup.  However Microchip's track record of running individual session based web services isn't at all good.  Just look at the clusterf--k they've made of their forum for the last five years!

Here's a litany of recent Microchip software disasters as if we needed reminding...

o MPLAB X - launched in Oct 2011, it took four years to be what I'd call production ready.
o Harmony - launched in Nov 2013, that took two years before you could even start to do anything serious with it.
o Microchip Code Configurator - like Harmony, another sh!tty code generator to create untrustworthy source code.
o Forum - took about six months to settle down, and it's still sh!te. A solution looking for a problem if ever there was one.

At least the responsive* website released in the past week or so seems to work, although it appears to be the previous site layout with a re-chrome. At least it's not broken like the forum was for months.

And, the MPLAB Xpress UI does at least seem to work... apart from the bolt-on Java nonsense!

*responsive: when I first heard that term a year or so ago I though it meant it was going to be fast. Err... no, that's not what it means.

[andersm]

Even this board has plenty of users for whom the simplest out-of-the-box experience is the most important criterion when selecting chip vendor. These kinds of on-line tools are probably a good fit for people like that.

[BloodyCactus]

for example, how many times do you need to use the Refactor menu compare to wanting to add a watch item? 1:200 perhaps?

if your using menus and not using key bindings for things you need instantly, your doing it wrong. adding a watch has a default keybinding of what, ctrl-shift-f9? i bind it to ctrl-e w.

netbeans/mplabx is powerful, but that lies it mostly not using the mouse.

[Sal Ammoniac]

Time to load MPLABX on my PC, up to the point where I could start working an existing project - 120 seconds.

I guess there's something wrong with your pc. Here it takes 12 seconds.
And no, I'm not using an SSD. But I do use ext4 as filesystem.

On my Windows 8 system (with an SSD), MPLAB X takes 4 seconds to load.

So they sould be working on making the native MPLABX less piss-poor rather than jumping on the Cloud bandwagon

What's piss-poor about it? Granted, it took a long time to get stable and usable, but right now it's a rather nice tool and not what I'd call piss-poor. Have you tried a recent version?

[mikeselectricstuff]

Time to load MPLABX on my PC, up to the point where I could start working an existing project - 120 seconds.

I guess there's something wrong with your pc. Here it takes 12 seconds.
And no, I'm not using an SSD. But I do use ext4 as filesystem.

On my Windows 8 system (with an SSD), MPLAB X takes 4 seconds to load.

So they sould be working on making the native MPLABX less piss-poor rather than jumping on the Cloud bandwagon

What's piss-poor about it? Granted, it took a long time to get stable and usable, but right now it's a rather nice tool and not what I'd call piss-poor. Have you tried a recent version?

That comment was based on the 120 secs to start figure - if it was an inherent issue it would be unacceptable.  I still use 8.91 so no experience of how good or bad MplabX is

[Sal Ammoniac]

That comment was based on the 120 secs to start figure - if it was an inherent issue it would be unacceptable.  I still use 8.91 so no experience of how good or bad MplabX is

He must have his machine configured incorrectly if it takes 120 seconds to load. Or perhaps he's only got 2 MB of RAM or a very slow processor/disk. As I mentioned in my previous post, it only takes 4 seconds to load on my machine. This isn't bad for a tool that I start perhaps only once a day.

[nctnico]

Virusscanners can also make your PC slow down to a grinding halt.

[Ian.M]

Virusscanners can also make your PC slow down to a grinding halt.

+1
See: http://www.microchip.com/forums/m900659.aspx

[Howardlong]

for example, how many times do you need to use the Refactor menu compare to wanting to add a watch item? 1:200 perhaps?

if your using menus and not using key bindings for things you need instantly, your doing it wrong. adding a watch has a default keybinding of what, ctrl-shift-f9? i bind it to ctrl-e w.

netbeans/mplabx is powerful, but that lies it mostly not using the mouse.

That was an example, personally speaking I don't want to spend hours learning how to reconfigure an IDE, and having to apply those settings on every machine I use, life's too short, but that's just my opinion of course! My point was that, just like Eclipse for example, the menus are far too busy and therefore not clear. The MPLAB Xpress is simplicity itself, and in that respect it works.

[Mr Smiley]

Anybody know if it uses the full XC8 compiler, or the free version 

 

[Bruce Abbott]

He must have his machine configured incorrectly if it takes 120 seconds to load. Or perhaps he's only got 2 MB of RAM or a very slow processor/disk.

I only have 1GB of RAM and a 2.8GHz dual-core CPU, but I am running Windows XP and it is plenty fast enough for most of the stuff I do. MPLABX only uses 325MB on my machine so RAM isn't the problem.

The main problem is all that 'background scanning' etc. that it does on startup. Perhaps a nice feature to have, but not so efficient when done in Java. I just want to get to my source code and start working on it! The web app doesn't have all that baggage.

[Howardlong]

Anybody know if it uses the full XC8 compiler, or the free version 

 

It's the PRO I think! From the FAQ, bottom of this page in the FAQ tab, "Why would an MPLAB X user have a need to use MPLAB Xpress?"

"MPLAB Xpress highlights the potential code savings that could be realized by upgrading to a PRO subscription."

Thus far, Xpress is only on PIC10, 12, 16 and 18.

[dannyf]

Microchip probably picked up the last software guys other firms left, )

I really hope the atmel acquisition would have helped - but then the hi-tech acquisition didn't see then adopting hi-tide in favor of mplab. Hi-tide is an eclipse based ide offered by hi-tech. It ran flawlessly.

[dannyf]

Took a test drive of the mplab cloud version. Have to say that i'm positive impressed: a utilitarian UI, fast start-up and compile time.

Really impressed. A huge step forward from mplab and mplab x.

Hope it adds simulation soon.

[donotdespisethesnake]

Slightly OT, but there was a hilarious rant on the mbed site about the cloud "losing work" https://developer.mbed.org/questions/7033/mbed-SERVER-MAINTAINENCE-DESTROYS-4-MONT/

You lost your work as soon as you put it in the cloud

[dannyf]

to my horror, the file I have been working with for the past four months was empty.

Tough to blame the cloud for that.

[mikeselectricstuff]

Slightly OT, but there was a hilarious rant on the mbed site about the cloud "losing work" https://developer.mbed.org/questions/7033/mbed-SERVER-MAINTAINENCE-DESTROYS-4-MONT/

You lost your work as soon as you put it in the cloud

If you are stupid enough to put 4 months' work in the cloud without a local backup I have no sympathy. 

[Howardlong]

Took a test drive of the mplab cloud version. Have to say that i'm positive impressed: a utilitarian UI, fast start-up and compile time.

Really impressed. A huge step forward from mplab and mplab x.

Indeed. I wish they'd released this as a fat client instead of MPLAB X. Hmm, I wonder if it's possible to hack MPLAB X to make it look like MPLAB Xpress?!?

Hope it adds simulation soon.

It has that or is there some particular aspect of the simulator you're after?

A minor fault, it doesn't seem to want to remember my credentials and auto logon.

[Sal Ammoniac]

to my horror, the file I have been working with for the past four months was empty.

Tough to blame the cloud for that.

Amazing how trusting some people are. I'm paranoid about these things. When I do development, I use a local Git repository to track all changes, and I push these changes to remote repositories hosted by github and bitbucket whenever I make even a minor change.

[BloodyCactus]

that mbed post is lol worthy. did you see the suppor guys response?

However, sadly on this occasion the snapshots are not available from the time that we ran out of disk space.

umm their cloud stuff ran out of disk space....

altium in the clound, mplabx in the cloud.

ugh.

[eugenenine]

I have about 4 seconds load time for mplabx as well, on a $279 laptop.

I lost all my e-mail back when hotmail tried to switch their servers to windows and have been wary of these cloud services ever since.  If you read the fine print on most of them you'll find the standard "not liable for lost blah blah blah".  Unless your paying big $$$ for a guaranteed backup service then your cloud data isn't backed up at all.

OTOH, $work$ provides a windows laptop and MS Excel has lost several months of work when it converted a spreadsheet to .tmp files when I saved it.

[Karel]

to my horror, the file I have been working with for the past four months was empty.

Tough to blame the cloud for that.

Amazing how trusting some people are. I'm paranoid about these things. When I do development, I use a local Git repository to track all changes, and I push these changes to remote repositories hosted by github and bitbucket whenever I make even a minor change.

+1. Exactly what we do as well.

On topic, no way that we are going to use a cloud/online service for hardware or software development.

[dannyf]

"no way that we are going to use a cloud/online service for hardware or software ..."

Just curious, who is "we" here?

[Karel]

"no way that we are going to use a cloud/online service for hardware or software ..."

Just curious, who is "we" here?

The company I'm part of.

[dferyance]

While losing work in the cloud isn't too surprising, it kinda breaks one of the big selling points of the cloud; no more dealing with backups and redundancy, someone else does for you. If there is a risk of data loss, might as well run a Linux server and skip maintenance. It might be just as reliable / unreliable.

[NivagSwerdna]

Hm... Well I tried it for fun....

OK... creating a new project is quite intutive and pasting the config pragmas reasonably obvious....

... but then...

You're screwed because there is no library reference or other help to hand.

Gave up.

[Howardlong]

You're screwed because there is no library reference or other help to hand.

Being as you were using a cloud service, did you try the internet? 

I'm not sure what library reference you were after.

[NivagSwerdna]

I'm not sure what library reference you were after.

Actually I found it today.... it's that blue question mark in the dashboard... that's what I needed.

[Sal Ammoniac]

While losing work in the cloud isn't too surprising, it kinda breaks one of the big selling points of the cloud; no more dealing with backups and redundancy, someone else does for you. If there is a risk of data loss, might as well run a Linux server and skip maintenance. It might be just as reliable / unreliable.

That's the thing--you're transferring responsibility for backups to someone else who may or may not be conscientious about doing the backups. If they don't and there's a hardware failure, you're screwed. I trust myself more than I trust someone else to keep my data safe--that's why I'm leary of anything cloud related.

[dannyf]

I have been trying it for the last few days and I have to say that the more I use it the more I like it - it is one of those rare software tools that Microchip got it right.

A few things i would like to have but for the most part, they got it right, and got it right the first time.

[Howardlong]

I have been trying it for the last few days and I have to say that the more I use it the more I like it - it is one of those rare software tools that Microchip got it right.

A few things i would like to have but for the most part, they got it right, and got it right the first time.

In general I'd agree with that. It'd be nice if they could wrap up that nugget and deliver it with hardware debugging capabilities into a simple single click setup for a local install. It's the shear cleanliness of the UI that I really like.

[SKPang]

Does anyone know the cost of using the cloud compiler? I wonder how it compares to Pro compiler.

[Howardlong]

Does anyone know the cost of using the cloud compiler? I wonder how it compares to Pro compiler.

Free, gratis, zip, nada, rien. At the moment it only supports PIC10/12/16/18.

[Flanbix]

Can we have only one project?
I created a new project and the other one I had just disappear and got replaced by the new one...

[dannyf]

I have about 20 projects loaded at this time.

[Flanbix]

I just realised that the project tree only contains the active project, the other ones are saved but not shown and can be recalled from the open menu.
Silly me, I thought it will be the same as MPLAB X...

[Howardlong]

I just realised that the project tree only contains the active project, the other ones are saved but not shown and can be recalled from the open menu.
Silly me, I thought it will be the same as MPLAB X...

In some ways it's a benefit, one of the reason MPLAB X is so slow is that it parses all your open projects on start up whether you want it to or not.

[Karel]

In some ways it's a benefit, one of the reason MPLAB X is so slow is that it parses all your open projects on start up whether you want it to or not.

I don't find it slow. It starts and it's ready parsing the project in 12 seconds. For me, that's acceptable for a program that I start
in the morning and leave open the whole day.

Btw, why should one have to open multiple projects at a time?

Btw2, I don't use MPLABX to actually write code. For that I use Kate, one of the best code editors ever.
When I save something in Kate, MPLABX automatically get notified and updates the content in the IDE.

[Howardlong]

Btw, why should one have to open multiple projects at a time?

You generally don't for PIC work, however the default is to open up a new project wothout closing the last one down. It simply acts as a "recents" list for me, it's not unusual for me to be working on half a dozen projects at any one time. Using it in this way makes the parsing a waste of time, but I've yet to figure out how to turn it off. At least with Eclipse you can close a project but still have it in your project list so it doesn't parse, but can open it as needed on demand.

[dannyf]

The concept of work space vs. Project space, common on other ides, is yet to be implemented on the Xpress .