keep terminal open after run command

[blezek]

Would like an option to keep the terminal open after a run command. Because the ESP8266 is event driven, often my scripts produce output long after NodeMCU-Tool closes the serial terminal after running a lua file. A flag to the command would be most helpful.

[AndiDittrich]

hi blezek,

currently, the run command only waits for a incommming "new line" from the ESP8266 - sequence \n\r>. it is may possible to redirect every incomming message to stdout, but it requires some deeper modifications of the application structure.

As a result of such modification, NodeMCU would keep the connection open for a infinite time and has to be killed by an external process...

are you using NodeMCU-Tool within an external application ?

[blezek]

@AndiDittrich Appreciate you getting back to me.

Here's my typical use case.

1. write Lua code, with print statements for debugging
2. run nodemcu-tool --port /dev/tty.w* --baud 74880 upload src/blynk.lua to upload to the ESP8266
3. run nodemcu-tool --port /dev/tty.w* --baud 74880 terminal
4. type dofile ( 'blynk.lua' )
5. watch output to see what happens
6. repeat

If I could have the terminal command execute the dofile, or have the run command keep the terminal open, then my debugging cycle would be a bit shorter. The run is nice, but my debugging statements sometimes take a few seconds to appear (like connecting to a WiFi network) that I couldn't see them.

This make more sense?

[AndiDittrich]

Hi Daniel,

my suggestion is to add a --run flag to the terminal action, which transmits a dofile command initially and continues as terminal session - it only requires a few new lines of code - what do you think ?

with this enhancement you could create a simple shell script like this to speed up the development process

debug.sh

#!/bin/bash

# upload the file
nodemcu-tool upload src/blynk.lua

# run the file "blynk.lua" within a new nodemcu terminal session
nodemcu-tool terminal --run "blynk.lua"

this shall reduce your workload to a single cli statement like ./debug.sh

btw. you should consider to create a project based configuration to store the tty settings

[blezek]

Hi @AndiDittrich

Your suggestion would be fantastic! I really like your tool, between it and esptool.py to flash the firmware, and emacs, I have a great development setup for the ESP chip.

Let me know when it's ready, and I'll test it out.

Thanks,
-dan

[AndiDittrich]

ready!

Example 1

$ nodemcu-tool terminal --run helloworld.lua
[SerialTerminal] Starting Terminal Mode - press ctrl+c to exit
dofile("helloworld.lua")
Hello World!
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YEAH!!! HELLO WORLD!!!
String: Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consetetur sadipscing elitr

[blezek]

Perfect, looking forward to trying it out soon.