Which version of MPLabX are you using?

[Jerry Messina]

I'm not sure what else to look for.
Perhaps some sort of permissions issue/compatibility mode problem??

Personally, I don't install any dev tools into "Program Files" or "Program Files(x86)", but looking at the .pdf It looks like octal (the guy who wrote the driver) does and it worked for him.

[janni]

Personally, I don't install any dev tools into "Program Files" or "Program Files(x86)", but looking at the .pdf It looks like octal (the guy who wrote the driver) does and it worked for him.

Normally I don't do it either and had both MPLABX and Swordfish installed on another disc in dedicated directories but in desperation I've reinstalled both in default directories. Didn't help though.

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Perhaps some sort of permissions issue/compatibility mode problem??

Thought about it as well but didn't reach desired result with any combination of privileges. I use the same OS as you and one would think nothing special would have to be done but apparently something is different.

[janni]

Finally got it working . Tried everything, including editing Windows registry , while the solution was simple - MPLAB X had all the necessary data but the toolchain .jar file in Swordfish directory.

Installing the MPLABX plugin resulted in placing the .jar file somewhere in AppData\Roaming\mplab_ide directory where MPLABX apparently doesn't need it. When my desperate attempt to manually add the compiler ended with MPLABX response that SF plugin is already installed and I should rather add the toolchain, not the compiler, I've tried to point to either the compiler or the SF toolchain .jar file locations. None worked so I decided to unite them by moving the .jar file and... success.

[Jerry Messina]

...while the solution was simple - MPLAB X had all the necessary data but the toolchain .jar file in Swordfish directory.

Installing the MPLABX plugin resulted in placing the .jar file somewhere in AppData\Roaming\mplab_ide directory where MPLABX apparently doesn't need it.

Let me see if I follow you here...

First-
On my system, when you install the mplabx plugin (.nbm), it extracts the .jar file into AppData\Roaming\mplab_ide\xxx, where it IS required.
If the .jar file is missing from that folder, mplabx complains about "missing toolchain" and if you look at mplabx Tools | Plugins, SF has moved from the 'installed' tab to the 'downloaded' tab, and on the 'downloaded' tab you have to click 'install' again to get it back.

There is no copy of the .jar file in the Swordfish directory on my system.

So, you're saying that you had to put a copy of the .jar file into the Swordfish folder to get it to work? Any particular place in the directory?

[janni]

So, you're saying that you had to put a copy of the .jar file into the Swordfish folder to get it to work? Any particular place in the directory?

Yes, without the toolchain .jar file in SF base directory I couldn't force MPLABX to add the toolchain, though the plugin was installed. But I just checked whether the .jar file is needed in SF directory for MPLABx to run with SF toolchain and it's not .

So I removed the .jar file from AppData\Roaming\mplab_ide\xxx and the toolchain vanished and the plugin was shown as uninstalled. So you're right, the .jar file is needed there, just wasn't enough to register the SF toolchain. Maybe it was something specific to environment on my PC that blocked the toolchain configuration while installing the plugin but the manual registration (Options/Embedded/Build Tools/Add..) required presence of the .jar file in SF base directory.

[Jerry Messina]

That's really odd!

Do you know if the installation would work if the .jar file was in the MPLABX folder along with the .nbm plugin file, or does it have to be in the base swordfish folder?
If so, I could have the installer put a copy of the .jar along with the .nbm just in case somebody else has the same issue.

[Jerry Messina]

Do you have some sort of anti-virus/protection running that might prevent the system from unzipping the .nbm file?

[janni]

Do you know if the installation would work if the .jar file was in the MPLABX folder along with the .nbm plugin file, or does it have to be in the base swordfish folder?
If so, I could have the installer put a copy of the .jar along with the .nbm just in case somebody else has the same issue.

For manual adding of the toolchain, the .jar file was required to be present in base compiler directory, alongside Swordfish.exe. Maybe, if it was there before plugin installation, there would have been no need to manually add the toolchain, but there's no certainty.

Anyway, once the manual toolchain registration went fine, it wasn't necessary to repeat the procedure after I removed the .jar file and reinstalled the plugin. Just to be sure I uninstalled the plugin once again, removed downloaded file and installed the plugin - this time without the .jar file in SF directory - and everything went fine. Looks like something was missing before the manual registration but once it's there, there's no problem.

If nobody had such problem before, it may be very specific and it could be enough to mention how to add the toolchain manually in the toolchain tutorial.

Do you have some sort of anti-virus/protection running that might prevent the system from unzipping the .nbm file?

The unzipping went fine - all files were where they were supposed to be. And I have marked previously all relevant SF and MPLABX files, together with the .nbm one as trusted in the antivirus, which didn't help at all.