Installation of PlatformIO Core by extension fails

[adricasti]

Description

After installing the PlatformIO IDE extension in Visual Studio Code, the installation of the built-in PlatformIO Core fails and the extension fails to initialize.

I noticed that after the extension says PlatformIO Installer: Finished! Please restart VSCode, it fails in fact, when you restart VSCode it again tries to install over and over. I think the problem is somehow related to the way the virtual environment is configured, it seems that it's incorrect and the platformio executable can't find dependencies.

After the automatic but failed installation of PlatformIO Core, I opened a terminal and tried:

~ 
source /Users/adrian/.platformio/penv/bin/activate

penv ~ 
python --version
Python 3.11.7

penv ~ 
pip list
[list of 26 packages, just checking that the venv looks good, this is where it gets interesting]

penv ~
/Users/adrian/.platformio/penv/bin/platformio --help
ModuleNotFoundError: Traceback (most recent call last):
  [more trace of the error, the end is interesting]
    from platformio.project.integration.generator import ProjectGenerator
  File "/Users/adrian/.platformio/penv/lib/python3.11/site-packages/platformio/project/integration/generator.py", line 19, in <module>
    import bottle
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'bottle'

Configuration

VSCode: 1.96.4
PIO IDE: v3.3.4
System: Darwin, 24.2.0, arm64

Exception

Error: ModuleNotFoundError: Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/Users/adrian/.platformio/penv/lib/python3.11/site-packages/platformio/__main__.py", line 103, in main
  cli()  %23 pylint: disable=no-value-for-parameter
  ^^^^^
File "/Users/adrian/.platformio/penv/lib/python3.11/site-packages/click/core.py", line 1161, in __call__
  return self.main(*args, **kwargs)
         ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
File "/Users/adrian/.platformio/penv/lib/python3.11/site-packages/click/core.py", line 1082, in main
  rv = self.invoke(ctx)
       ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
File "/Users/adrian/.platformio/penv/lib/python3.11/site-packages/platformio/cli.py", line 85, in invoke
  return super().invoke(ctx)
         ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
File "/Users/adrian/.platformio/penv/lib/python3.11/site-packages/click/core.py", line 1691, in invoke
  cmd_name, cmd, args = self.resolve_command(ctx, args)
                        ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
File "/Users/adrian/.platformio/penv/lib/python3.11/site-packages/click/core.py", line 1738, in resolve_command
  cmd = self.get_command(ctx, cmd_name)
        ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
File "/Users/adrian/.platformio/penv/lib/python3.11/site-packages/platformio/cli.py", line 94, in get_command
  module = importlib.import_module(commands[cmd_name])
           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
File "/Users/adrian/.platformio/python3/lib/python3.11/importlib/__init__.py", line 126, in import_module
  return _bootstrap._gcd_import(name[level:], package, level)
         ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 1204, in _gcd_import
File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 1176, in _find_and_load
File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 1147, in _find_and_load_unlocked
File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 690, in _load_unlocked
File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap_external>", line 940, in exec_module
File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 241, in _call_with_frames_removed
File "/Users/adrian/.platformio/penv/lib/python3.11/site-packages/platformio/home/cli.py", line 21, in <module>
  from platformio.home.run import run_server
File "/Users/adrian/.platformio/penv/lib/python3.11/site-packages/platformio/home/run.py", line 36, in <module>
  from platformio.home.rpc.handlers.project import ProjectRPC
File "/Users/adrian/.platformio/penv/lib/python3.11/site-packages/platformio/home/rpc/handlers/project.py", line 32, in <module>
  from platformio.project.integration.generator import ProjectGenerator
File "/Users/adrian/.platformio/penv/lib/python3.11/site-packages/platformio/project/integration/generator.py", line 19, in <module>
  import bottle
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'bottle'

============================================================

An unexpected error occurred. Further steps:

* Verify that you have the latest version of PlatformIO using
`python -m pip install -U platformio` command

* Try to find answer in FAQ Troubleshooting section
https://docs.platformio.org/page/faq/index.html

* Report this problem to the developers
https://github.com/platformio/platformio-core/issues

============================================================


  at /Users/adrian/.vscode/extensions/platformio.platformio-ide-3.3.4-darwin-arm64/node_modules/platformio-node-helpers/dist/index.js:1:10943
  at ChildProcess.i (/Users/adrian/.vscode/extensions/platformio.platformio-ide-3.3.4-darwin-arm64/node_modules/platformio-node-helpers/dist/index.js:1:4548)
  at ChildProcess.emit (node:events:518:28)
  at ChildProcess.emit (node:domain:489:12)
  at maybeClose (node:internal/child_process:1104:16)
  at Process.ChildProcess._handle.onexit (node:internal/child_process:304:5)

Let me know if there are other commands that I could run to generate further logs and fix this, at I am keen to start exploring PlatformIO

[adricasti]

I found out that the root cause is that in a Mac with SentinelOne running, the bottle python package is incorrectly flagged as malware. Bottle #1471

[adricasti]

I'm trusting that the bottle developers and their community are not sneaking malware in their package 😄 So a temporary workaround is to close VSCode after the PlatformIO IDE extension installs PlatformIO Core, then in a new terminal:

source /Users/your_user/.platformio/penv/bin/activate
pip uninstall bottle
cd /Users/your_user/.platformio/penv/lib/python3.11/site-packages
git clone https://github.com/bottlepy/bottle.git
cd bottle
pip install .
/Users/your_user/.platformio/penv/bin/platformio --help

Now this should work without throwing the ModuleNotFound error