sloeber in multiuser environment (support for read only sloeber_home)

[jantje]

Discussed in #1747

^{Originally posted by mwisse01 January 26, 2026}
Hallo,
we are a university and want to use sloeber for education on our linux workstations. It is a multiuser environment, so no normal user has write access on installation directories, only on his user directory.
I installed sloeber in eclipse as root and if I start eclipse as normal user, an error window appears: "the folder .../eclipse/arduinoPlugin exists but sloeber does not have write access. Alternatively use environment SLOEBER_HOME".

Neither it is a solution for us to give all users write access on the eclipse/sloeber installation directory, nor to use SLOEBER_HOME and point to the home directory of the user, because then every user fills the home directory with dublicated installation stuff.
Most eclipse plugins I know don't need write access to the plugin installation directory (in an environment like ours) , why does sloeber need it?
Do you have a suggestion, what can I do?

Regards and thanks for your support.
Michael

[jantje]

The current implementation should be able to handle a read only sloeber_home.
If the sloeber_home folder contains a sloeber.txt file no error warning will be given about the read only sloeber_home folder.
Otherwise a error message at startup will be given
The sloeber.txt is a key value file where currently only the key Maintainer is supported.
The sloeber preferences pages json files, boards and platforms, libraries show the value of the Maintainer key in the sloeber.txt file in the sloeber_home folder.
The preference "install libraries" is disabled.

Normally Sloeber makes the boards.sloeber.txt (and others) in the folder of the platform provided boards.txt (and others).
In read only sloeber_home these files are created in the temp folder with a path as if the tmp folder is sloeber_home.
So ${Sloeber_home}/packages/... sloeber.txt becomes ${temp}/packages/... sloeber.txt
Private platforms are still treated in the old way (boards.sloeber.txt and boards.txt in the same folder)

[jantje]

@mwisse01
Can you try the Sloeber version in the actions https://github.com/Sloeber/arduino-eclipse-plugin/actions/runs/21848560550
See the note above to get rid of errors warnings about the non writable SLOEBER_HOME folder and to give a custom message in the sloeber preferences.

[mwisse01]

Thanks for your work.

I tried the new version, added a filer sloeber.txt in Sloeber/arduinoPlug with this content:
SloeberHome.readOnly=true
SloeberHome.maintainer.name=[xxxx]
SloeberHome.maintainer.email=[xxxx@xxxx.de]

Sloeber starts without error message, that the SLOEBER_HOME is read_only.

In the menupoint Preferences->Sloeber there is an error "Sloeber home is read only. Failed to read "Maintainer= in sloeber.txt",
so I suppose sloeber.txt is in the correct directory and can be read, but the content is incorrect.

Another suggestion would be, that the Preferences->Sloeber show the installed boards and libraries with the hint, who to contact for installation of additional ressources. Actually it doesn't seem to be possible to see, what is installed.

[jantje]

In the menupoint Preferences->Sloeber there is an error "Sloeber home is read only. Failed to read "Maintainer= in sloeber.txt",
so I suppose sloeber.txt is in the correct directory and can be read, but the content is incorrect.

Yes I changed the key to Maintainer as I didn't see a use case for splitting it into separate parts to just concatenate them.

Actually it doesn't seem to be possible to see, what is installed.

For the maintainer this should be visible as usual (was not the case as I F* up as reported in #1756)
For the read only users they see the available platforms when creating a project or changing the project properties->sloeber