Alex likes programming Arduino but finds that original Arduino IDE is inconvenient in some ways. And instead of looking for other open source IDE he started to build his own. He called it “MariaMole” (means “Soft Mary” in Portuguese). His IDE is fully compatible with original Arduion IDE. It imports imports settings and libraries same way. It also compiles same way as original software. The biggest difference here is a project tree. You probably noticed when project consist of many source files it becomes hard to navigate between files. If there is too many of them, you need to scroll tabs and so on.
MariaMole is an open-source project being developed by me, on my spare time. But it's already fully functional. Check some of its features:
- Runs over Arduino install: MariaMole uses the Arduino software that you have installed, so all your Arduino configurations are kept. If you want, You can still use the original Arduino side-by-side to MariaMole.
- Workspace support multiple projects at the same time. Workspaces are special folders where you can group any number of projects. This helps you keep the projects organized, and allows working with several projects at the same time. If you have used Visual Studio, CodeLite, Code::Blocks, Eclipse or any other modern IDE, you know that this makes a difference. Specially if you're designing a system with multiple Arduino boards talking each other, you're gonna love the workspace feature!
- Multiple serial port consoles at the same time: And more: Once you open a serial console, it's always available. You don't have to close or re-open it again to upload your project to Arduino
- Files use open-formats: All project information and configuration are stored on a single XML file (Except for code!)
- Building process configurable: The Arduino IDE does a great job behind the scenes, but, sometimes, you're gonna need to fine-tune the building sequence, add or replace libraries or change the compiler options. Of course, unless you ask for it, MariaMole works the same way as Arduino, building the whole project for you.
- Imports Arduino examples and sketches: You won't have any problems to reuse your old sketches.
- Easily import Arduino libraries: A Wizard windows helps you with that. And also with adding new files to projects, importing other files, configuring the projects, etc.
- Color-themes: Do you prefer a dark color-scheme for code editing? No problem. This is the default for MariaMole. Or do you prefer writing your code against a white background? No problem yet! MariaMole comes with a light theme too. And you can design your own theme!
Good news, everyone! Author started to adapt the code to run also on Linux and Mac! It won't be ready so fast, but I believe we'll be multiplatform version until version 1.0.
