It's not possible to flash and use REPL in the same time

[berkut0]

Hi

I have been using Sublime with the UPIOT plugin a lot lately to work with micropython. It still seems to me to be the most reliable tool for working with micropython prototypes. I have a little note about installation and use in my repository.

One of the most important features of UPIOT is the seamless use of the COM port. I don't need to disable the REPL console to use sampy / upload files. It works in the same console. Using this plugin, when flashing with the console open, an error pops up - COM port, of course, busy. This feature just wasn't provided? Is this feature available because of modified ampy — sampy? Is it possible to implement this seamless behavior in intellij plugin?

This UX doesn't feel right — the terminal window is just in one window, the error in another, close the console, then flash, then open...

[berkut0]

I think, pull request #139 related

[Theagainmen]

I agree with you so much. The workflow feels so lacking this way, while this plugin is so nice! It's this 'small' thing that just feels like it's ruining the whole workflow.

[robomartin]

My current work-around is to have Thonny open and connected to the board for upload and REPL. I edit the code on PyCharm and never connect to the board from it. I would very much like to not have to do this and work entirely from PyCharm.

[ssddanbrown]

I've just spent some time attempting to replicate this kind of workflow within pycharm. Unfortunately I could not get it down to a button press, but I got it down to a terminal line run, although you need to quit out of the terminal REPL between runs. Here's my approach in case if helps anyone else:

1. Within my local pycham venv I installed the rshell package.
2. I created a flash_dev.sh file with the below contents. Make it executable (chmod +x flash_dev.sh)

#!/bin/bash
rshell --buffer-size=512 --quiet "cp $1 /pyboard/dev.py; repl ~ import dev"

3. You can then use a pycharm terminal window to run the script, passing the file you want to flash like: ./flash_dev.sh script.py.
4. You can exit out the repl with Ctrl+X. A re-run from being in the repl would just need a Ctrl+X followed by :arrow_up: then Enter in the terminal.

I have other flash_*.sh scripts in my working repo here to flash files across (without running) and to flash a file as the main.py file on the device.

I tried to wrap this in a run configuration but failed since you can't pass the active filename to the shell run configurations. You could hard-code it to a specific script, but then running without remembering to close the existing repl session makes things messy.