MPLAB now in the cloud

[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 .