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Arduino now has a command line interface (CLI)

London, UK, February 28, 2012: A Revision 3 Arduino Uno microcontroller mounted on prototyping board. Arduino is an open-source electronic prototyping platform that is flexible and easy-to-use. Intended for artists, designers, hobbyists, and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments.

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Listening to the Arduino developer community, the Arduino team has released a command line interface (CLI) for it. The CLI is a single binary file that performs most of the features present in the IDE. There was a wide gap between using the IDE and being able to use CLI completely for everything in Arduino.

The CLI will allow you to Install new libraries, create new projects, and compile projects directly from the command line. Developers will get an advantage to test their projects quickly. You can also create your own libraries and compile them directly, for your own or third-party codes.

Installing project dependencies will be as easy as typing the following command:

arduino-cli lib install "WiFi101” “WiFi101OTA”

In addition, the CLI has a JSON interface added for easy parsing by other programs. There were many requests for makefiles integration and the support has been added for it. The Arduino CLI can run on both ARM and Intel (x86, x86_64) architectures which means it can be installed on a Raspberry Pi or on any server.

Massimo Banzi, Arduino founder stated: “I think it is very exciting for Arduino, one single binary that does all the complicated things in the Arduino IDE.”

The Arduino team looks forward to people seeing integrating this tool in various IDEs.

In the blog post by the Arduino team they have mentioned, “Imagine having the Arduino IDE or Arduino Create Editor speaking directly to Arduino CLI – and you having full control of it. You will be able to compile on your machine or on our online servers, detect your board or create your own IDE on top of it!”

CLI is a better alternative to PlatformIO and will work on all three major operating systems, Linux, Windows, and macOS. The code is open source but you will need a license for commercial use. Visit the GitHub repository to get started with Arduino CLI.