Hi,

Thanks for uploading the video and sharing your concerns. We will try to explain what is going on.

Unlike many conventional ARM-based devices that are supported through our optimized MSBuild backend and a collection of tested BSP packages, the Advanced ESP32 projects are built directly by the ESP-IDF framework (official ESP32 SDK by Espressif). We decided to handle the ESP32 platform this way in order to accommodate the rapid release cycle of the ESP-IDF that often releases updates introducing new features, large structural changes and breaking backward compatibility.

I.e. instead of an optimized VisualGDB package based on a specific version of ESP-IDF (that would get obsoleted very quickly), VisualGDB can run on top of any recent ESP-IDF release of your choice and produce exactly the same results as meant by Espressif. It will inherit the original ESP-IDF build system and the configuration settings.

PlatformIO likely uses a different approach – includes a subset of ESP-IDF with its own build subsystem that is faster and requires less configuration settings, but is not equivalent to the latest ESP-IDF framework. Hence most of the differences you mentioned are rather the differences between ESP-IDF (full-scale ESP32 SDK) and PlatformIO (a lightweight SDK for smaller projects) and are not actually related to VisualGDB itself.

Although VisualGDB doesn’t support PlatformIO out-of-the-box yet, it does support the ESP32 Arduino core (see the new Arduino project wizard) that provides similar lightweight experience at a cost of offering fewer features. Espressif itself is also addressing the build speed issue by switching their IDF to CMake+Ninja. Once this switch is complete, the ESP-IDF projects will build much faster.

Regarding the other issues mentioned in the video, it looks like you did not specify valid debug settings when creating the project. If you don’t have a JTAG probe, simply select a COM port. VisualGDB will warn that no actual debugging will be possible, but will still allow programming the device via the COM port. You can change it for an existing project via VisualGDB Project Properties -> Debug Settings. Alternatively, please try right-clicking on the project node in Solution Explorer and select “Program FLASH Memory”. This will run the same FLASH programming routine as used by PlatformIO.

The COM port syntax (/dev/ttyS<port number – 1>) is to be expected – this is a valid Cygwin COM port syntax, so please do not change it. Please also note that changing the programming speed from 115200 might break programming, depending on the capabilities of the specific COM2USB chip used on your board.

Hope this helps. Let us know if you have any further questions.