Pycom and Damien George join forces for the ESP32

[Fred]

Dear Developers,

We are pleased to confirm that after further discussions with Damien George, we have decided to work together on a single Port of MicroPython for the ESP32. This Port will be MIT licensed thus enabling Pycom and the existing MP community to build a super-rich and quality code base hosted on the official MicroPython repository.

We will be submitting Pull-requests to the MP repository over the next 2 to 3 weeks starting early next week. When the Port is feature ready, Pycom will switch to using this as the source to build the firmware for all our ESP32 based products.

In Pycom’s Github account, we will host a fork of this jointly built ESP 32 port where we will add our advanced network features such as LoRa, Sigfox and Cellular all of which will be covered by our existing GPL V3.

Pycom is committed to propagating MicroPython amongst the IoT industry as we firmly believe this great language is the ideal solution for rapid product development in an already complex space.

Best wishes
The Pycom Team

[manchoz]

Great news!

[mkharibalaji]

Wow !!!!

[bmarkus]

Geat news!

Like!

[jmarcelino]

This is excellent news, having a single ESP32 port with such a permissive license means contributions truly benefit everyone and it's likely there will be a lot more of them.

However at the same time it does add another administrative layer on the "development" stack

User bug report/requirement ->
Pycom -> Pycom repo -> MicroPython repo -> ESP-IDF repo

I hope we can continue to enjoy the short release cycles and fixes while riding the fast moving target that is the ESP-IDF.

Will someone from Pycom join the MicroPython team, for example with commit privileges?

[daniel]

@jmarcelino we will continue with our fast pace of development and release cycles, and we'll make sure there's no extra overhead for bug reports and fixes.

We already have commit privileges on the official MicroPython repository, you should be able to see my name here: https://github.com/orgs/micropython/people I've been part of that team since the WiPy 1.0 was in development (~2 years ago) :-)

Cheers,
Daniel

[robert-hh]

That's the right move for our all good.

[pdp8user]

That's very good news! The long-term benefits to all developers and manufacturers of a single MicroPython evolution stream can't be underestimated:-)

[Roosted]

Awesome, this is the best news i'e heard form Pycom since a while :D

It seems like people are really listening to customers wishes:
@Roosted said in Features wish list:

1. Upstream open source code

[Roosted]

Is there any news on this?

@Fred said in Pycom and Damien George join forces for the ESP32:

starting early next week.

We are now almost one week further, and I have not seen any PR.. :(

Would love to see this happen!
Keep the awesome software work going!

[daniel]

@Roosted we are a bit delayed on this but it's definitely going to happen. Last week we were completely overloaded with Sigfox. The PR's will start appearing this coming week.

Cheers,
Daniel

[Roosted]

@daniel Awesome! I'm looking forward to it!

[Roosted]

@daniel said in Pycom and Damien George join forces for the ESP32:

The PR's will start appearing this coming week.

Any progress here? I have not seen a single PR..

[daniel]

Any progress here? I have not seen a single PR..

I know... we are delayed :-(
We plan to send a burst of PR's over the weekend.

Cheers,
Daniel

[Jeck]

Great news! Thank you for bringing uPy forward!

[daniel]

OK, we have started the process. The first step is to add some changes to the IDF:

https://github.com/espressif/esp-idf/pull/358
https://github.com/espressif/esp-idf/pull/359
https://github.com/espressif/esp-idf/pull/361

Now the next immediate step is to create PRs in micropython-esp32 for the following:

• Refactor the socket module to allow multiple NICs (WiFi, LoRa, Sigfox, LTE, ...)
• Add support to build different boards (WiPy, LoPy, SiPy, ...)

We expect to be able to submit those 2 PRs tomorrow.

Cheers,
Daniel

[crankshaft]

@daniel - so it appears that more than 2 months has passed and the various promises to submit these pull requests have still not been carried out ?

...starting early next week.

...The PR's will start appearing this coming week.

...We expect to be able to submit those 2 PRs tomorrow.

...We plan to send a burst of PR's over the weekend.

[robert-hh]

@crankshaft If you compare the two MicroPython ports for esp32 and the Pycom family, you'll notice that they are quite different, not only in matters of implementation, but also in the various classes. That looked like a lot of decisions to be made on which port is changed and how, and all of that while Pycom still piles up a lot of other challenges. And so I was surprised about the short time line announced.
Maybe, the '2 to 3 weeks' are to be understood like the Singaporean 'in 6 Months'. I'll be glad when it comes.

[jmarcelino]

@crankshaft
It seems to be already going?

https://github.com/micropython/micropython-esp32/pull/69

[daniel]

Well, we were too optimistic with the timelines. There are 2 things happening:

1. The transition is a lot more complex than we initially thought.
2. We are also working on several other things in parallel which limits the amount of time than we can dedicate to the merge.

Anyway, it's already happening:

https://github.com/micropython/micropython-esp32/commit/dc82def1f482c17517e5bcaeae4191787623fa0e

https://github.com/micropython/micropython-esp32/commit/f704375b2083863866502a5e3b67bfb6480af8b5

https://github.com/micropython/micropython-esp32/commit/ff0ca1e782b3e6f3640b7ea2019f9ea716b2a52a

Next thing will be Bluetooth, but I expect a lot of discussion around the API before it's approved to be merged.