"Please select a port before upload" breaks port-less devices

[matthijskooijman]

It seems that the new "Please select a port before upload"-message that was added in #7958 breaks uploads to port-less devices, such as the digispark boards. These devices use a custom uploader tool that uses a custom USB protocol through libusb rather than a serial port.

On a new install, there would be no need to select a serial port with these boards. However, the newly added message is still shown, and uploading is prevented. On a system without serial ports, where a port has never been selected before, this completely prevents users from uploading their sketches.

Note that I haven't confirmed this problem myself, this report is based on a report from a user in #arduino a few days ago. However, from how I understand the code works, I expect this issue exists as described.

To fix this, I guess the IDE should become aware of whether a board needs a serial port to upload. One easy way would be to see if the upload recipe uses the serial port name (the digispark core does not, though that feels a little bit fragile.

@PaulStoffregen

[per1234]

Closing as duplicate of #8052

[PaulStoffregen]

This is on my list to fix. At the moment I'm crazy busy bringing up new hardware. Can't work on this (or much of anything else) right now.

I see the "Start 1.8.8" commit just recently merged. Please ping me if 1.8.8 is likely to release within a week or two and I'll try to put the hardware stuff aside for a while to get this fixed. As long as 1.8.8 is many weeks or months away, I really need to prioritize on this hardware project. It's what actually pays the bills and lets me contribute to Arduino and libraries.

[per1234]

AFAIK, the "Start 1.8.8" commit has no significance. They usually do the version bump immediately after each release but sometimes that gets forgotten. That's a problem because then the hourly build displays a confusing version number in the title bar and About dialog (e.g. Arduino IDE 1.8.7 Hourly Build 2018/10/24 04:33 instead of the expected Arduino IDE 1.8.8 Hourly Build 2018/10/24 04:33). I noticed the bump hadn't happened after the 1.8.7 release and so I submitted that PR. I have no insider knowledge about release schedules but I don't think that PR being merged is any indication since it's a simple, obvious change that there's no reason to wait on.

Thanks for all your contributions to the Arduino project PaulStoffregen. I think that your "Please select a port before upload" is a very valuable feature that will help a lot of beginners. I'm looking forward to a time when the posts about avrdude: ser_open(): can't open device "\\.\COM1": The system cannot find the file specified. no longer pop up on the forum several times a week.