E716: Key not present in Dictionary: "boards"

[mattbrowley]

Describe the bug
When I run :ArduioChooseBoard, it throws the error in the title. I have arduino installed, and I have pointed to the directory in my ftplugin/arduino.vim with
let g:arduino_dir = "/usr/local/share/arduino"
I have checked that directory, and boards.txt is present in /usr/local/share/arduino/avr/

System information

• OS: linux (Pop!_OS 21.04x64)
• Vim: nvim v0.6.0
• Arduino: Arduino: 1.8.16
• CLI version: arduino-cli Version: 0.20.1 Commit: abb21449 Date: 2021-11-29T11:34:58Z
• ArduinoInfo:
  Board : arduino:avr:uno
  Programmer : arduino:usbtinyisp
  Port : none
  Baud rate : 9600
  Hardware dirs : /usr/local/share/arduino/hardware/arduino/avr
  Verify command: arduino-cli compile -b arduino:avr:uno -P arduino:usbtinyisp --build-path "/home/matthewrowley/Arduino/CD_Rob
  ot/build" -v "/home/matthewrowley/Arduino/CD_Robot/CD_Robot.ino"

To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. load vim-arduino using vim-plug in .vimrc
2. open any .ino file
3. run command :ArduinoChooseBoard

Expected behavior
With no argument, this command should give me a list of all installed boards and let me choose one

Working command
This bug is not regarding verify/upload issues

Screenshots

Additional context
I installed arduino with the install.sh script rather than using the Pop!_OS package manager because I wanted the latest stable version. I installed the binary to /usr/local/bin. This didn't seem to put the boards.txt file anywhere at all, such as in ~/.arduino15/, so I looked at the output of "verify" within the Arduino IDE and noted that it was referencing the original downloaded folder where install.sh was located. So, I removed arduino from /usr/local/bin, manually moved the downloaded folder from "Downloads" into a more permanent home at /usr/local/share, and then installed again to /usr/local/bin from there. Now the IDE output shows many references to that folder, and I felt confident to proceed to include let g:arduino_dir = "/usr/local/share/arduino" in my ftplugin/arduino.vim

I included some other sane defaults based on information from the vim-arduino help. Below is the entirety of my ftplugin/arduino.vim file right now:

let g:arduino_cmd = "/usr/local/bin/arduino"
let g:arduino_home_dir = "~/.arduino15"
let g:arduino_dir = "/usr/local/share/arduino"
let g:arduino_build_path = "{project_dir}/build"
let g:arduino_run_headless = 1
"let g:arduino_board = 'arduino:avr:pro'
"let g:arduino_programmer = 'arduino:avrispmkii'
let g:arduino_board = 'arduino:avr:uno'
let g:arduino_programmer = 'arduino:usbtinyisp'
let g:arduino_serial_cmd = 'screen {port} {baud}'
let g:arduino_auto_baud = 1 " Searches script for Serial.begin() for baudrate
" let g:arduino_serial_port = '/dev/ttyUSB0'

nnoremap am :ArduinoVerify
nnoremap au :ArduinoUpload
nnoremap ad :ArduinoUploadAndSerial
nnoremap ab :ArduinoChooseBoard
nnoremap ap :ArduinoChooseProgrammer

Thank-you for your help!

[stevearc]

This is a fantastic bug report, thank you.

So in your case vim-arduino will mostly be making use of the arduino-cli instead of trying to read files from the arduino install directory. The exact error is happening on this line where we try to pull the boards out of some json output. From that I assume that the output of the command is either empty or in a different format than we expect. I thought it might be the version of arduino-cli, but I updated to your version and my output still looks like I expect.

Could you run arduino-cli board listall --format json and paste the output here?

[mattbrowley]

It just returns an empty {}

I did try to run down obvious user errors before posting, so I'm glad the bug report is helpful.

Thank you for your quick response.

[stevearc]

Okay, so this seems like an issue with the cli tool then. I haven't encountered this myself, but some people are recommending a arduino-cli core update-index and a arduino-cli core install arduino:avr. Running arduino-cli core list --all should show you which boards are installed and which are available.

[mattbrowley]

Now :ArduinoChooseBoard is giving me the list as expected, but when I choose the Pro Mini I get:

[mattbrowley]

Oh, and arduino-cli board listall --format json now gives a big json database which includes an entry for the Pro Mini

{
"name": "Arduino Pro or Pro Mini",
"fqbn": "arduino:avr:pro",
"platform": {
"id": "arduino:avr",
"installed": "1.8.4",
"latest": "1.8.4",
"name": "Arduino AVR Boards",
"maintainer": "Arduino",
"website": "http://www.arduino.cc/",
"email": "packages@arduino.cc"
}

[stevearc]

Great, that's progress! I'm not sure what could be causing the new error, but upon review I was doing the json decoding in a stupid way and I changed it to be significantly less stupid. Update and see if that makes a difference

[stevearc]

Side note and shameless self promotion: I notice that you're using Neovim 0.6. If you'd like a better chooser interface (say, Telescope or a floating window), check out https://github.com/stevearc/dressing.nvim

[mattbrowley]

Now it's a new error

:

[stevearc]

Great! This is actually the underlying error that was masked by the previous error. This is caused by what I suspected at the very beginning: your arduino-cli version is newer than the one I used when I first added support for it and the API has changed. I updated the command args and luckily they seem to be backwards compatible with older versions of the cli.

Hopefully this should be the last of it!

[mattbrowley]

Looks like it worked! I'm currently setting things up properly in neovim for the first time, looking for asynchronous plugins and things that leverage neovim and lua. Dressing looks neat, so I'll include it in my plugins too!

[mattbrowley]

You may already be working on this, but I am getting an error setting the programmer too. If it is a new problem, I can open a new issue if you want.

[stevearc]

Forgot we used the same command for programmers. Fixed!

[mattbrowley]

It looks like it all works! I verified a program, but I couldn't try uploading or opening a serial connection because I don't have a board on hand right now.
Thank-you! I've been wanting to do arduino in vim for a while now.

[stevearc]

Glad you got it working!