I, too, had a tremendous difficulty in upgrading to the Espressif ESP-IDF v5.2 in VisualGDB.

What I didn’t know – was the problem was with the *project file* and not the toolchain install.

My final success was where I renamed my C:\SysGCC\esp32 to C:\SysGCC\esp32-12.4 and let the new toolchain install by default (not checking the side-by-side checkbox).

Even after the fresh install, still seeing the python errors at project configuration time, I tried to instead create a fresh example project. Success!

I then used winmerge to compare the project files between my existing to-be-upgraded project file and the freshly created one.

Only two changes needed: The toolchain GCC/GDB versions:

<ToolchainID>
<ID>com.visualgdb.xtensa-esp32-elf</ID>
<Version>
<GCC>13.2.0</GCC>
<GDB>12.1</GDB>
<Revision>1</Revision>
</Version>
</ToolchainID>

And the IDF Checkout Version and Subdirectory settings:

<ESPIDFExtension>
<IDFCheckout>
<Version>release/v5.2</Version>
<Subdirectory>esp-idf/v5.2</Subdirectory>
<Type>ESPIDF</Type>
</IDFCheckout>
<COMPort>COM19</COMPort>
<SuppressTestPrerequisiteChecks>false</SuppressTestPrerequisiteChecks>
<UseCCache>false</UseCCache>
<DeviceID>ESP32</DeviceID>
</ESPIDFExtension>

Upon making that change manually (and of course deleting sdkconfig file and the build directory)….  my existing VisualGDB project now works with the new ESP-IDF 5.2 toolchain.

Note there’s since been a 5.2.1 release from Espressif.

btw: I tried the side-by-side WITH the checkbox, and no directory rename… but that didn’t work for me. (although at this point, I’m not sure if it was the project file problem or not). I seem to recall an error at install time.

In any case, be sure to make a full backup of the C:\SysGCC directory.