Resurrect this fantastic tool

[marcelstoer]

This a plea for @AndiDittrich & @serg3295 to join forces and to bring NodeMCU-Tool back to the spotlight one way or the other.

• This project hasn't been updated in 3y.
• The fork at https://github.com/serg3295/NodeMCU-Tool/ does not seem to publish to the NPM repository. Instead it points to the original's npmjs.com package.
• The fork uses separate branches for up-to-date ESP32 support (e.g. auto and idf4).

I am sure the community would very much appreciate if the two of you could find a way to merge your efforts. Having a single NodeMCU-Tool project has lots of benefits for the community. Regardless of what comes out of this: thanks for what you've contributed so far!

[serg3295]

Branches 'auto' and 'idf4' of the fork are outdated. The current branch is dev-esp32.

I have no plan to publish my fork in NPM repository, as I am not the author of this application.
I can make a PR of the 'dev-esp32' branch.

[marcelstoer]

I can make a PR of the 'dev-esp32' branch.

I would certainly appreciate that. However, without commitment or interest from @AndiDittrich this would be in vain.

[AndiDittrich]

dear @marcelstoer ,

currently i've absolutely no time to maintain/enhance this project

[marcelstoer]

Np, I know how that feels. @serg3295 did a great job making your tool compatible with current versions of the ESP32 releases (keeping the ESP8266 support as-is). The question is, would you be willing to accept his PR and push a new release to the NPM repository i.e. minimal effort?

[AndiDittrich]

"simple" is relative...merging requires some time...just took a quick look onto the branch

[serg3295]

Hello, @AndiDittrich

I opened a PR that contains only 3 commits to facilitate reviewing. These are the minimum changes to support esp32xx chips

In this PR:

• dependencies are not updated
• esbuild is not added
• warnings of eslint@8.57 not fixed

I can add commits with major upgrade for glob, commander and update dependencies if it will be necessary.

[marcelstoer]

Thanks a lot @serg3295 for your efforts!

• dependencies are not updated

I guess that's fine. The dependabot in this project had previously opened a pile of PRs to get this fixed (still open).

[AndiDittrich]

thanks, just two question (comments) regarding backward compat

[serg3295]

@AndiDittrich

I updated all dependencies and opened two PRs.
First PR updates dependencies without breaking changes
Second one has a breaking change as glob requires node >= 20

You can simply drop these PRs if they don't make sense or break backward compatibility.

[marcelstoer]

Thanks @serg3295, looks sensible. So, a pragmatic way forward could be to merge the first PR and release this as 3.x, and then merge the 2nd.

[serg3295]

Perhaps. However, there is not much difference between node18 (for serialport) and node20 (for glob). It is a breaking change anyway.

[AndiDittrich]

nodejs 18 ist required for current debian stable

[serg3295]

Well, then the glob can be updated in a year :-)

[serg3295]

I changed glob version to 10.4.4 that runs on node18 and force pushed the second PR.

[marcelstoer]

(somewhat related to #101)

@AndiDittrich allow me to take you up on your initial comment here

currently i've absolutely no time to maintain/enhance this project

It's sad to hear, but I can very much relate to that. I know from personal experience how demanding it can be to maintain even small projects consistently over a long period of time. Sometimes it's the lack of extra free-time, sometimes the lack of motivation, sometimes the lack of community support, sometimes other personal stuff...and sometimes a bit of all of that.

Long story short, I would hate to see this great project become yet another slowly dying OSS project.

Would you be willing to share the maintenance burden? I could review PRs and help with cutting releases and pushing them to the NPM registry.