Pycharm External Tools

PyCharm allows us to configure third-party command-line applications to run as External Tools from within PyCharm.

We will now configure python-minimizer, uflash, and microfs as external tools.

The python-minimizer utility compresses a Python source file by removing as much white space as possible. The micro:bit has limited memory space, and minimizing source files allows us to install the largest file possible.

The uflash utility is used to flash the BBC micro:bit with Python scripts.

The microfs utility allows interaction with the limited file system provided by MicroPython on the BBC micro:bit. Using this utility, you can list the files on the device, copy a file to the micro:bit file system, and retrieve a file from the micro:bit filesystem.

PyCharm provides a built-in terminal, so if you prefer to interact with any of these utilities directly via the command line, you may do so.