ESP32 IDF 4.3, 4.4 due for deprecation

[mikee47]

I'm raising this issue so we can decide when to remove IDF 4.3, 4.4 support from the codebase.

According to https://github.com/espressif/esp-idf 4.3 is no longer supported and 4.4 support ends in August.
New designs should be using version 5.2.
The current default installed version (using the Sming install scripts) is IDF 4.4.

IDF v5.2 is now out of Beta and I've merged the latest release into the Sming fork at https://github.com/mikee47/esp-idf.
Existing 5.2-beta installations can be updated as follows:

cd /opt/esp-idf
git pull
git submodule update --init --recursive

[mikee47]

Note: Currently CI testing is failing for v5.2 release due to deprecation warnings. These will be addressed shortly.

Everything passes except my USB library. A load of low-level HAL code has been ripped out of 5.2 so will take some work to sort out. I'll probably block it from building with IDF 5.2 in the meantime.

[slaff]

when to remove IDF 4.3, 4.4 support from the codebase.

We can deprecate them in 5.2 and remove them officially in 6.0. 6.0 can be the next version after 5.2.
Are there any known issues with IDF > 4.4 and Sming?

[mikee47]

Are there any known issues with IDF > 4.4 and Sming?

Not to my knowledge. Main issue will likely be existing projects using IDF code directly so dependent on a specific IDF version.