How to delegate code compilation to a remote machine?

Question

Sometime I write Arduino code on a slow Windows laptop that I use for controlling hardware projects and 3D printing.

My main Windows computer and also my Linux home server are located somewhere else but are much faster and I would like to use those for compilation.

Remote Desktop or equivalent are not practical due to different screen resolutions. Also, my main Windows machine is not always on, only the server is, but it has no GUI installed.

The sources are already located on a shared network folder and I use an external editor for the code. Arduino IDE just does compilation and sometimes upload (which often I could do via OTA).

How to delegate compilation of Arduino projects to a remote machine?

Answer 1

If you don't have a GUI, you can still compile and upload sketches by using the Arduino CLI. With it you can do most things, that you can do with the Arduino IDE. I'm using this myself to upload new code to a Nano, that is connected to a Raspberry Pi in a project in use.

You can connect via ssh to the remote server and let it compile/upload the sketch. I wrote a simple bash script to first copy the source to the server (since you are using a network share, this is not necessary for you) and invoke the compilation and upload.

Note: Before you can actually compile with the Arduino CLI, you have to download the correct core for your chip. This is described in the README of the linked github project.