LITTLEFS

LITTLEFS

LittleFS library for arduino-esp32

• A LittleFS wrapper for Arduino ESP32 of Mbed LittleFS
• Based on ESP-IDF port of joltwallet/esp_littlefs , thank you Brian!
• See also the LillteFS library for ESP8266 core
• Functionality is similar to SPIFFS
• Either LITTLEFS or SPIFFS but not both simultaneously can be used in same Arduino project
• Related PR in esp32 core development

Warning: It depends on ESP-IDF, esp32 core, esp_littlefs and Mbed LittleFS versions

• Tested with esp32-core #git b92c58d and on core release 1.0.4
• See LITTLEFS_time example for enabling file timestamps

Installation

• Copy LITTLEFS to other Arduino IDE libraries
(see File > Preferences > Sketchbook location).

Usage

• use LITTLEFS same way as SPIFFS

• A quick startup based on your existing code you can re-define SPIFFS like this

  #define USE_LittleFS
  
  #include <FS.h>
  #ifdef USE_LittleFS
  #define SPIFFS LITTLEFS
  #include <LITTLEFS.h> 
  #else
  #include <SPIFFS.h>
  #endif 
  

Differences with SPIFFS

• LittleFS has folders, you need need to iterate files in folders
• At root a "/folder" = "folder"
• Requires a label for mount point, NULL will not work
• maxOpenFiles parameter is unused, kept for compatibility
• LITTLEFS.mkdir(path) and LITTLEFS.rmdir(path)
• Speed comparison based on LittleFS_test.ino sketch (for a file 1048576 bytes):

Filesystem	Read time [ms]	Write time [ms]
FAT	276	14493
SPIFFS	767	65622
LITTLEFS	916	16200

Arduino ESP32 LittleFS filesystem upload tool

• Download the jar file from here
• In your Arduino sketchbook directory, create tools directory if it doesn't exist yet.
• Copy the tool into tools directory <home_dir>/Arduino/tools/ESP32LittleFS/tool/esp32littlefs.jar
• Alternatively you can replace the arduino-esp32fs-plugin with this variant, which supports SPIFFS and LittleFS, both
• Requires mklittlefs executable - download the zipped binary here or from esp-quick-toolchain releases here
• Copy the binary to packages\esp32\hardware\esp32\<x.x.x>\tools\mklittlefs\ folder
• Restart Arduino IDE.

PlatformIO

(notes from BlueAndi )

• Add to platformio.ini: extra_scripts = replace_fs.py

• Add _replacefs.py to project root directory (where platformio.ini is located):

  Import("env")
  print("Replace MKSPIFFSTOOL with mklittlefs.exe")
  env.Replace (MKSPIFFSTOOL = "mklittlefs.exe")
  

• Add mklittlefs.exe to project root directory as well.

Credits and license

• This work is based on Mbed LittleFS , ESP-IDF port of joltwallet/esp_littlefs , Espressif Arduino core for the ESP32, the ESP-IDF - SPIFFS Library
• Licensed under GPL v2 (text)