Problems running ESP IDF

[janwil]

Hello,

I am trying to run ESP-IDF on Arch Linux. I followed all the steps on the Getting Started guide (replacing python with python2.7 where necessary), but when I try to run make menuconfig on Hello World example I get

The following Python requirements are not satisfied:
future>=0.15.2
cryptography>=2.1.4
pyparsing>=2.0.3,<2.4.0
pyelftools>=0.22

At the same time pip2 reports that the versions installed are fine, e.g.

$ pip2 list | grep cryptography
DEPRECATION: Python 2.7 will reach the end of its life on January 1st, 2020. Please upgrade your Python as Python 2.7 won't be maintained after that date. A future version of pip will drop support for Python 2.7.
cryptography 2.6.1

I must say I am quite confused, why can't make menuconfig find these modules?

Then I discovered that Arch AUR also has packages for esp-idf and esp-idf-git. I tried these, too (setting the IDF_PATH variable accordingly) and there I get another error with make menuconfig:

make[1]: Entering directory '/opt/esp-idf-sdk/tools/kconfig'
cc -c -D_GNU_SOURCE -D_DEFAULT_SOURCE -DCURSES_LOC="<ncurses.h>" -DNCURSES_WIDECHAR=1 -DLOCALE -MMD /opt/esp-idf-sdk/tools/kconfig/mconf.c -o mconf.o
/opt/esp-idf-sdk/tools/kconfig/mconf.c:1053:1: fatal error: opening dependency file mconf.d: Permission denied
}
^
compilation terminated.

I tried googling for this, and a similar problem was reported at https://stackoverflow.com/questions/514 ... atal-error, but the solution was "do not run something with sudo" that I am not able to translate to Arch environment -- to install a system package I have to do it with sudo.

So any help with either of these problems will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
Jan

[ESP_Angus]

Hi Jan,

The Python errors happen after you exit the menuconfig dialog, right? You should be able to get into the menuconfig dialog without a Python check.

Can you confirm that you've set the Python interpreter version under "SDK tool configuration" in menuconfig to python2 or python2.7? This is the interpreter that the build system will use to run the dependency check.

If you run the command shown here for Python 2, does it say that everything is already installed?
https://docs.espressif.com/projects/esp ... n-packages

BTW, if you're using IDF master branch then it should be possible to use Python 3 as well.

Regarding the AUR packages, they're not something we produce or suppport so I have no idea - sorry. Unless they're being regularly updated I suggest sticking with our install guide.

[janwil]

Hi Jan,

The Python errors happen after you exit the menuconfig dialog, right?

No, the errors happen when I run make menuconfig, so I can not even get to the menu to select "SDK tool configuration" or anything else.

If you run the command shown here for Python 2, does it say that everything is already installed?
https://docs.espressif.com/projects/esp ... n-packages

Yes, it shows I have everything installed ("requirements already satisfied").

BTW, if you're using IDF master branch then it should be possible to use Python 3 as well.

OK, I can try that. But it would still be good to understand why the mainline installation process fails.

Best,
Jan

[janwil]

Hi again,

After having played around with this and that I finally got the toolchain to work with Python3 in a virtualenv. Still no clue why the site-wide approach did not work, but at least I have a working system now.

Best,
Jan