Manage multiple ESP-IDF build configurations with ease · Developer Portal

[giscus[bot]]

Manage multiple ESP-IDF build configurations with ease · Developer Portal

Tired of juggling complex command-line arguments with endless idf.py flags? ESP-IDF v6.0 introduces a new feature, letting you switch between multiple build configuration. Learn how to structure your project, isolate sdkconfig files, and migrate from ad-hoc commands to clean, declarative builds.

https://developer.espressif.com/blog/2025/12/cmake_presets/

[KaeLL]

How to manage sdkconfig files properly, organizationally-wise? I mean, I could either manually edit them, having a common file and multiple files for, say, each board like in the idf example at the beginning, or have one self-contained defconfig for each board. The latter is redundant, while the former is an exhausting and inefficient.

[mfialaf]

Hi KaeLL, ESP-IDF supports a layered approach, so you’re not limited to “one full sdkconfig per board” vs “one common file + hand-maintained board files”.

A common pattern is to control one or more sdkconfig.defaults* fragments and have the final sdkconfig file generated. You can specify multiple defaults files via SDKCONFIG_DEFAULTS (semicolon-separated), they’re applied in order, so later files override earlier ones. This makes it easy to compose common + board + profile (e.g. sdkconfig.defaults.common;sdkconfig.defaults.board_foo;sdkconfig.defaults.release).

To avoid redundancy, after adjusting options in menuconfig, you can generate only those changed config values into sdkconfig.defaults file using idf.py save-defconfig. For multi-target projects, there’s also automatic sdkconfig.defaults. support. More information can be found in documentation

This --preset feature should make this layered approach easier to use. Define the combinations once, and decide which to use by simple --preset <preset-name>.