ROM BASIC, or: How do I preserve all the capabilities of a new ESP32?

[Piquan]

I've been using the ESP32 for a little over a month now, and never could get into the ROM BASIC. Now that I read viewtopic.php?t=2799 and https://github.com/espressif/esp-idf/re ... g/v3.0-rc1, I see why. I let the first boot irreversibly disable ROM BASIC.

I've got other dev boards that I'm using, and I'd like to their capabilities as long as possible for experimenting, not burning any fuses until I'm close to ready to send my product to the customer. If I write-protect the CONSOLE_DEBUG_DISABLE fuse, then I can never go back later and disable ROM BASIC, when I'm ready to ship; is that correct? I'm not even sure how I'd go about write-protecting it: I'd have to plug in the device before running espefuse.py, and as it starts booting before espefuse.py runs, it would burn the CONSOLE_DEBUG_DISABLE fuse before I got a chance to write-protect it.

Is there a way to get started without burning any fuses? (I'm assuming the identity fuses — the MAC address, chip version, and the package identifier — are already fused at the factory, sensibly.) I'd like to keep my options open as long as I can, including disabling ROM BASIC in the future.