greetings fellow arduinoers i wanted to make a suggestion to the next release of the arduino software is some function that you can check when you start up the software where it will automatically save changes every predefined time, like every 5 minutes or so , recently wrote about about a paragraph of comment explaining my complex code and explaining functions and interrupts and arrays and other BS (to non coders) and then the power goes out from the storm and all my stuff was lost and i must type it all in again so it doesent seem like much to ask for a simple sutosave script or something, it would make many people very happy :) thank you ~Katzmatt

Hmm - something like this would be useful, but I think I would want it to save to a "special" file and not the main .pde you are working on, so that it doesn't overwrite. On next load, you could check the timestamps, and if the autosave file is newer than the main .pde, ask if you want to load the autosave file instead, perhaps?

YES exactly and good thinking of the alt file, like just something in the temp folder under AUTOSAVE.pde
this doesent sound too complex to implement either, i hope this gets into the next release

It would also be helpful if the Arduino IDE could automatically save the file before compiling/uploading... I found out this the hard way the other day, when I was exiting the IDE, it prompt me whether I wanted to save changes, I thought since I had compiled/uploaded many times before I chose no. And it turned out that nothing was saved.

Anyway, saving on compiling is kind of standard in other development environment so I think it should be made standard in Arduino as well.

I could support this suggestion if it were made an option, controlled in a config file, and defaulted to the current way of doing things.

If the compile resulted in a huge number of errors, I would want the original version available to revert back to. For example, in the past I had a large block of code accidentally deleted. (It was selected and I bumped the [Enter] key, but didn't realize it until the next compile reported lots of errors.) An implicit save before compile would not have been a good thing for me.

Compile is compile, and Save is save, IMHO. Standard autosave on a timer would have saved (most of) your work, unrelated to compile/upload considerations, right?


Please, please, please implement this.

I know I'm ultimately responsible for saving, and should do it more often, but total system crashes are so rare, that I don't. So when it does crash, I'm fair scuppered. >:(

It's happened to me a few times now, and as sods law would dictate, it's always when I've got loads of code that's been added/changed. D'oh!!! :'(

So, yeah, autosaving to a temp file, like Word does, would be extremly helpful and give the IDE a more polished, professional feel.

As for the autosave on compile? Not such a great idea I think. As long as you know that the IDE doesn't save the code on compile, then you know that when you close it and it asks if you want to save it, you click 'OK'.

Forgive me if I'm wrong AlphaZeta, but I'm guessing you won't be making that mistake again. ;D Suppose it could be an extended option like TBAr suggests, but I for one would have it turned off.

Regards peeps, The Cageybee

+1 for autosave. Java crashed twice loosing several programs loaded.