[WORKAROUND] chipKIT core will not install in Arduino IDE 2.x

[JacobChrist]

This year I switched my class to Pico Pi but I'm still using chipKIT and Arduino board for some early labs. I have also switched to Arduino IDE 2.x. Some students have experienced issues of the chipKIT core not installing in Arduino IDE and instead getting an error about not being able to find the root directory.

A workaround we have found is that if we install chipKIT-core using Arduino IDE 1.8.x then restarting the 2.x IDE that chipKIT core will work.

[per1234]

chipKIT core not installing in Arduino IDE and instead getting an error about not being able to find the root directory.

It will be useful to provide the exact error message:

Installing chipKIT:pic32-tools@1.43-pic32gcc
Failed to install platform: 'chipKIT:pic32:2.1.0'.
Error: 13 INTERNAL: Cannot install tool chipKIT:pic32-tools@1.43-pic32gcc: searching package root dir: no unique root dir in archive, found '/Users/per/Library/Arduino15/tmp/package-10652322/bin' and '/Users/per/Library/Arduino15/tmp/package-10652322/lib'

The problem is that the archive doesn't have a root folder, which is specified as mandatory in the specification:

https://arduino.github.io/arduino-cli/latest/package_index_json-specification/#archive-structure

It must contain a single folder in the root.

% wget --output-file="$TMPFILE/pic32-tools-143-3-Darwin-image.tar.gz" https://github.com/chipKIT32/chipKIT-compiler-builds/releases/download/1.43-3/pic32-tools-143-3-Darwin-image.tar.gz

[...]

% tar -xzf "$TMPFILE/pic32-tools-143-3-Darwin-image.tar.gz"
% tree -L 1 .
.
├── bin
├── lib
└── pic32mx