In the next article we are going to take a look at the Arduino IDE. This is a development environment to work with Arduino about which A colleague already spoke to us some time ago. This IDE offers us an integrated development environment that includes a text editor for writing code, a message area, a text console, a toolbar with buttons for common functions, and a set of menus. The program can be connected to the Arduino board to upload and communicate with the programs.
Programs written with the Arduino IDE are called sketches. These sketches are written using the IDE's text editor, and are saved with the .ino file extension. The Arduino Integrated Development Environment (IDE) is a cross-platform application (Gnu / Linux, Windows and macOS). It is used for writing and uploading programs to Arduino-compatible boards, but can also, with the help of third-party kernels, be used with development boards from other vendors.
The editor interface is simple and clean, and in it we can find functions to cut/paste and search/replace text. The message area provides information when saving and exporting, and also displays errors. The console displays the IDE's text output, including full error messages and other information. In the lower right corner of the window, information about the connected board and the serial port is displayed. With the buttons on the toolbar, we can check and load programs, create sketches, open and save. The editing functions can be found in the menu bar.
The source code for the IDE is released under the GNU General Public License. The Arduino IDE supports the C and C++ languages using special code structuring rules. It also supplies a software library of the Wiring project, which provides many common I/O procedures.
User-written code only requires two basic functions, to start the sketch and the main loop of the program. These are compiled and linked with a main() program stub in a loop with the GNU tool chain, which is also included.
Install Arduino IDE on Ubuntu 22.04 or 20.04
The procedures that we are going to see here to install the Arduino IDE will be the same for other versions of Ubuntu, including Debian, Linux Mint, POP OS, MX Linux and others…
How to snap
One of the possibilities to install Arduino IDE (version 1.8.15) in Ubuntu is use the package snap available on Snapcraft. SNAPD is already enabled and ready to use on Ubuntu operating systems, so we will simply have to install the program by typing in a terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T):
sudo snap install arduino
For update the IDE, when a new version is published, we will only have to use the command:
sudo snap refresh arduino
After the installation, we can start it looking for its corresponding launcher in our system.
uninstall
If you would like to remove this app, in the terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) there is nothing more to write:
sudo snap remove arduino
Like Flatpak
If you prefer to use another installation option, you can choose use the package manager Flatpak to install the Arduino IDE package (version 1.8.19) . In case you use Ubuntu 20.04 and still do not have this technology enabled on your computer, you can continue The Guide that a colleague wrote a while ago in this blog.
When you can install this type of packages, in a terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) just type the following command to perform the installation:
flatpak install flathub cc.arduino.arduinoide
Once finished, we can start the program looking for the launcher in our system, or we can also start it by typing in the terminal:
flatpak run cc.arduino.arduinoide
uninstall
For remove the program from our system, we will only need to open a terminal (Ctrl + Alt + T) and execute in it:
flatpak uninstall --delete-data cc.arduino.arduinoide
Via APT
This first step is not necessary, if your system is up to date. However, to ensure that the list of software available in the repositories that we have installed is up to date, in a terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) it is only necessary to write:
sudo apt update
To use this installation option, we will not need to download any packages manually to install the Arduino IDE (version 1.0.5), because already it is available via Ubuntu's default package repository. Therefore, we can install it using the APT package manager by typing in the terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T):
sudo apt install arduino
After the installation is complete, to start the program we will only have to look for the launcher that is going to be installed on our computer.
Uninstall
If you no longer need this integrated development environment for Arduino boards, you can uninstall it using APT in a terminal (Ctrl + Alt + T) the following command:
sudo apt remove arduino; sudo apt autoremove
For more information about this IDE, users can consult the project website or on GitHub repository.