MariaMole – An Alternate Arduino IDE Aimed At Advanced Users

[Alex] has been working with Arduino for some time now, but always thought it lacked some features which advanced users would really find useful. He decided to devote some free time to fixing the problem and ended up coding an Arduino IDE for more advanced users. A screenshot of his work — called MariaMole — can be seen above. It is obviously different from the standard IDE, bot not so much as to scare off new users.

This is meant to complement the original IDE, so it actually uses those configuration settings as dependencies. Once running, the program allows you to have multiple projects open at once. These are managed with the tree in the left hand column and a series of tabs along the top of the code window. When it comes time to compile and load the sketch you can click one button like normal, or use the program to fine tune your compiler flags, libraries includes, and the like. It also allows for interaction through one or more serial terminal windows. We haven’t tried it ourselves, so please leave a comment with your thoughts after having given it a go.

thanks for the tip [Rodrigo].

49 thoughts on “MariaMole – An Alternate Arduino IDE Aimed At Advanced Users

  1. Hello, hack-a-day folks! My name is Alex. I’m the author of MariaMole. I’m always happy to appear on hackaday.com (I believe this is the 3rd or 4th time), but I have no idea who is this Rodrigo.
    Anyway, thanks for the post. It was a very happy surprise, since I’ve just released MariaMole to some local user groups and didn’t expect so many people trying it. If anyone needs any information or help, please, mail me!

    1. Alex, is it possible to get this supported as the main IDE for arduino? I could imagine that if you include a button called “classic mode” and “advance mode”, it would work very well for the arduino community. (e.g. newbies use the “classic mode” which removes the ‘workshop view’ and is minimalist, while advance users click on ‘advance mode’ with all the bells and whistles.)

    2. thank you very much for this job, as people at arduino do not spend much time on developing the IDE, it is great that people like you do it.
      Please can you explain how we can change the compiler settings, like code optimisation flags ?

  2. The Arduino… environment (I can’t even make myself call it an IDE) is pretty awful for actual coding. It’s great for pushbutton programming, but for editing code it’s a real disservice to anyone, especially beginners. Glad to see someone working on bringing it up to the standards of this century.

    I think using the Processing editor (which is equally crap for coding) was a good quick way to bootstrap the project. But now that Arduino is a successful company with a broad user base it should be left behind in favor of a new editor that’s not so caustic to beginners and experienced coders alike.

    (And while I really don’t want to be the “Huurr! Windows Only?!” guy…. None of the people I know who do serious Arduino dev (the ones who do things like create libraries and sell Arduino-compatible devices) use Windows. Maybe I just keep bad company. Looking forward to a cross-platform version.)

    1. Hi, Bob! I’m stuck to Windows due to professional reasons. I know a lot of electronic engineers in the same situation, several of them are Arduino hard-users. That’s why the first release was for Windows only. It was simply a matter of priorities. But I’m planning go multi-platform ASAP!

  3. I’m using Code::Blocks for Arduino code editing for an more advanced project, which started out with the Arduino mess an grew. I still hate the Arduino IDE with all I have. The Arduino libraries are not much better.

    1. I second the Code::Blocks route. They have an AVR project template, which has a few rough edges — one must set up the AVRdude programming command manually as an external tool for instance — but people do have patches for the template to address that.. and it has ‘managed’ build or external makefile modes just like Eclipse. And it’s much lighter-weight than Eclipse, so working on a netbook is less painful.

      1. Some Hack-A-Day commenters like you love complaining about bloat and overkill, but really contribute nothing except condescension. Where is your non-overkill project?
        Can you contribute constructively to this conversation? Because you’re setting yourself up for a lot of headaches if you think using an 8-bit microcontroller for blinking LED’s is overkill– Raspberry Pis are selling like CRAZY ;)

      1. I don’t think I’ve heard someone describe Windows as “good”, ever. I have heard “outdated”, “a relic”, “detritus from a bygone era”, “an abortion of design”, “inconceivably poor”, “a pitiful attempt” and “encumbered by a company culture of utter mediocrity” (probably my favorite.)

        Seriously, though, the hobby electronics market these days is pretty Mac-heavy with a good dash of Linux. The Windows PC is a dying market. Write your software accordingly.

  4. Great to see this happening. One of the things I really do not like about Arduino is the IDE. As long as you use it for ‘blink.c’ or something like it it’s OK. But since people are learning to program in this program, the lack of support for projects (and code completion) discourages learning to program structurally.
    On the other hand, using eclipse or writing your own makefiles ruins the experience that you you can start out of the box.
    This might be what the world needs ;)

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