Migrating from 4.x to 5.0

Guidance on how to upgrade from PlatformIO Core (CLI) v4.x to v5.x with emphasis on major changes, what is new, and what has been removed.

PlatformIO Core 5.0 is fully backward compatible with PlatformIO 4.0 projects.

Please read PlatformIO 5.0 Release Notes before.

Migration Steps

  1. Ensure that you do not use a short version of the Github declaration in lib_deps. Please use https://github.com/username/repo.git instead of username/repo.
  2. We recommend updating your project dependency declarations in lib_deps using a new owner-based syntax. See the Library Manager section for details.

What is new

In this section, we are going to highlight the most important changes and features introduced in PlatformIO Core (CLI) 5.0. Please visit PlatformIO 5.0 Release Notes for more detailed information.

PlatformIO Trusted Registry

PlatformIO Core 5.0 has been switched to the official PlatformIO Trusted Registry:

  • Enterprise-grade package storage with high availability (multi replicas)
  • Secure, fast, and reliable global content delivery network (CDN)
  • Universal support for all packages:
    • Libraries
    • Development platforms
    • Toolchains
  • Built-in fine-grained access control (role-based, teams, organizations).

The new Web front-end and upgraded PlatformIO Home are coming soon.

Collaborative Platform

PlatformIO Core 5.0 is fully unlocked for developers and teams. They can now share their packages (libraries, Development Platforms, toolchains) with team members or collaborate on open source projects. There are new CLI commands that help you to manage organizations, teams, team memberships, and resource access:

  • pio package – manage packages in the registry
  • pio org - manage organizations
  • pio team - manage teams and team memberships
  • pio access – manage package access for users, teams, and maintainers.

Package Management

The package management infrastructure has been rewritten from scratch. It is based now on the new PlatformIO Trusted Registry that supports a strict dependency declaration using the package owner. This improvement resolves the issues when package maintainers publish packages under the same name.

PlatformIO Core 5.0 does not handle packages from unofficial repositories declared via packageRepositories in platform.json. There were a lot of security issues and reports when PlatformIO Core 4.0 hangs when you manage external dependencies.

PlatformIO Core 5.0 uses THE ONLY official PlatformIO Trusted Registry that supports not only the libraries but also Development Platforms and toolchains.

Package maintainers can publish their libraries, development platforms, and toolchains to the registry using pio package CLI.

Library Manager

The biggest improvement for Library Management is the owner-based dependency declaration. You can finally forget about conflicts with library names in the registry. Use the new syntax ownername/pkgname to declare an owner-based dependency in “platformio.ini” (Project Configuration File) via lib_deps:

[env:myenv]
platform = ...
framework = ...
board = ...
lib_deps =
  bblanchon/ArduinoJson @ ^6.16.1
  knolleary/PubSubClient @ ^2.8

You can find an owner name of a library in the registry using PlatformIO Home > Libraries > Some Library > Installation tab.

Build System

SCons 4.0

PlatformIO Core 5.0 build engine has been upgraded to the latest SCons 4.0 - a next-generation software construction tool:

Custom Targets

PlatformIO Core 5.0 gives more freedom to developers and Development Platforms maintainers. They can now declare the Custom Targets:

  • Pre/Post processing based on dependent sources (another target, source file, etc.)
  • Command launcher with own arguments
  • Launch command with custom options declared in “platformio.ini” (Project Configuration File)
  • Python callback as a target (use the power of Python interpreter and PlatformIO Build API)
  • List available project targets (including dev-platform specific and custom targets) with a new pio run --list-targets command

See Build System section in PlatformIO Core 5 release notes for more details.

What is changed or removed

Introducing Strict SSL/TLS

The setting strict_ssl has been removed from pio settings. Now, PlatformIO Core 5.0 communicates over the encrypted SSL/TLS by default with the PlatformIO Registry and other services such as Remote Development.

At PlatformIO, we are always looking for ways to improve the security of our services.

packageRepositories

PlatformIO Core 5.0 does not support unofficial package repositories declared through packageRepositories in platform.json that was introduced in PlatformIO 3.0.

Please publish your development platforms and toolchains to the PlatformIO Trusted Registry using pio package CLI.

Command Line Interface

The following commands have been changed in v5.0.

Command Description
pio access New. Manage package access for users, teams, and maintainers
pio package New. Manage packages in the registry (publish, unpublish)
pio project data New. Dump build system data intended for IDE extensions/plugins
pio system info New. Display system-wide information
pio system prune New. Remove unused data
pio project init Update project configuration for the specific environment using pio project init --environment option
pio run List projects targets with pio run --list-targets option
pio account destroy New command to remove permanently PlatformIO Account and related data