FQBN not being found when connected through FTDI board

[apozharski]

I am trying to use the arduino-cli with a Pro-mini board. The board itself needs to be connected through an FTDI board. I have installed the arduino:avr core which provides arduino:avr:pro which should work for the board. However when calling arduino-cli board list the board's FQBN is blank and the board type is unknown.

[per1234]

This is the expected behavior for any board that uses an FTDI or any other USB to TTL serial adapter chip that has a generic VID/PID. There is not way for arduino-cli to determine the FQBN for these boards as they provide no unique identifying information. arduino-cli has no way of knowing what is on the other side of that FTDI board.

Closing as duplicate of #37