ESP32 Forum

Hi to everyone,
I'm struggling one day in order to install correctly the ESP-MDF SDK with no success.
I have already esp-idf installed and running in my C:\%user%\esp
These are the steps I followed:

I did Step1 in https://github.com/espressif/esp-mdf
I did Step2 in https://github.com/espressif/esp-mdf : I have installed the toolchain by pointing it to my %user%/esp/esp-mdf folder
Step3: I'm blocked because I'm not understaing what to do here in [b][i]the https://docs.espressif.com/pr ... s [/i][/b]

I also attached my esp-mdf directory after toolchain download (step2) and the MDF_PATH query by cmd which results empty .
Could you please guide me in order to compile the get-started demo ?

Awaiting your kind reply,
thanks a lot.
Nicola

Hi, I have solved by install everything in a Virtual machine.
Thanks
Nicola.

How did you point your toolchain to the esp-mdf folder? I'm lost here. Also, any idea why my esp-mdf folder doesn't include an esp-idf subdirectory after cloning the esp-mdf environment from github?

First of all, the documentation on how to install ESP-MDF is really inadequate and poorly written. It isn't sufficient to say that the process is similar to installing ESP-IDF, when there are indeed inconsistencies between the documentation and the actual installation. So for those newcomers who get stuck, this is the process I followed to make things work on a Windows environment. As a backdrop, I had a working copy of ESP-IDF installed.

If you don't already have ESP-IDF installed and need it, use the ESP-IDF Windows installer to first install ESP-IDF. The default location for this installation is "C:\Espressif\frameworks\esp-idf-v4.4.1". Windows installer also installs a toolchain kit at the same time in "C:\Users\[MyUsername]\ESP\.espressif". Since I wanted all of my esp-idf code in the same directory, I changed the location of ESP-IDF installation to "C:\Users\[MyUsername]\ESP\esp-idf-v4.4.1". The esp-idf-v4.4.1.2 folder houses all the code for ESP-IDF.

If you already have ESP-IDF installed, then choose the option "Use an existing ESP-IDF directory" in Windows installer and list the directory for your ESP-IDF. Installer will then prompt you to choose the location for your toolchain kit (default location: C:\Users\[MyUsername]\ESP\.espressif).

Use git clone to get the ESP-MDF code from github (see instructions on the ESP-MDF site). I chose to install ESP-MDF in "C:\Users\[MyUsername]\ESP\esp-mdf", just to keep all esp related code in the same location.

Now comes the more challenging part (at least for me) of setting up environment variables. Windows Installer might add a few environment variables when installing ESP-IDF, but you might have to change the location of some of these variables if you change default installation locations. Here are the environment variables that need to be set up:

User based environment variables:

• IDF_PATH: C:\Users\[MyUsername]\ESP\esp-idf-v4.4.1

• IDF_TOOLS_PATH: C:\Users\[MyUsername]\ESP\.espressif

• MDF_PATH: C:\Users\[MyUsername]\ESP\esp-mdf

In system based environment variables, edit the "PATH" variable to include:

• C:\Users\[MyUsername]\ESP\esp-idf-v4.4.1\tools

• C:\Users\[MyUsername]\ESP\esp-mdf\tools

Voila - this should hopefully make ESP-MDF code work.