The documentation for BiBoard programming says to use Arduino 1.x and ESP SDK 2.0.12.
Arduino: The v2.x IDE is much, much better than the v1.x. Keeping around an old, lesser version for programming BiBoard is not ideal. This could make sense in an industry environment where legacy equipment is being maintained, but in a learning environment it's not great as it's one step forward (using the Bittle!), two steps back (hassling with multiple versions of an IDE, working around already solved problems, etc...). If Petoi intends to continue on into the future, and it surely seems committed to that!-- then it is inconceivable that it remain on Arduino 1.x now that Arduino 2.x is released, stable, and widely deployed. I understand there's a technical reason for that, but AFAIK OpenCat is the only ESP32 project to be stuck like this so perhaps there's hope a solution can be found.
ESP SDK: Arduino IDE does not support multiple installed versions AND it always wants to update to the latest version. Since there are some breakages between Espressif sdk v2 and sdk v3, it's a big deal to have to continually uninstall/reinstall SDK versions. Again, this certainly isn't ideal for a learning environment. It's a lot of instructor overhead to have to support both SDKs, as the student absolutely need to return to v3 for everything else they do. And 2.0.12 isn't even the last version of sdk v2, that's 2.0.17.
After watching students use Bittles, both those problems seem like they are high priority and need addressing much sooner than later. These problems are real turn-offs, and they don't have to be. None of us learn anything of any value by hassling with them, and the hours lost cannot be recovered.
Actually, you can have as many versions of the Arduino IDE as you want in Windows and Linux. The zip file unzips to a folder with the executable and supporting files. See https://docs.arduino.cc/software/ide-v1/tutorials/PortableIDE/. I have both Arduino IDE 2.2.1 and Arduino IDE 1.8.19 on my Windows laptop.
In order to have a modern coding experience, IMO the way to go is using Visual Studio and the Visual Micro extension (https://www.visualmicro.com/ ). Visual Studio Community is free for academic instruction/research, hobby use and open source software development. Visual Micro has an inexpensive student/hobby license. It is a great combination, way better than any version of the Arduino IDE and what I use for most of my work.
As @Rongzhong Li has pointed out, one can also use VS Code with the Arduino extension both of which are free. VS is a heavyweight full IDE whereas VS Code is lightweight code editor and which one to use is a matter of individual needs and preferences but, IMO, they both are better than the Arduino IDE.
The ESP SDK is more problematic since there is a tighter connection between the ESP SDK version and the hardware version of ESP32 module in the BiBoard(s) that are in customers hands.
There is an opportunity cost to adding the latest Arduino IDE / ESP SDK support, namely the cost of not getting new robot hardware and software capabilities as quickly. Still, it is a worthy goal.
Thanks for your suggestions. We already use Arduino 2.x for programming and don't see much difference from 1.8.x. The auto-completion feature is helpful in many cases, and the modern look is pleasant, but I miss the "search in all files feature as in 1.8.x." So sometimes, I'd use VScode, which has Copilot, to develop new codes. For the teaching environment, we may need to update the images involving Arduino to 2.x.
Some problems related to MPU6050 would fail for versions newer than SDK2. 0. 12. Recently, we added support for another IMU that's unaffected. After thorough testing, we may update to the newer versions. However, we still need to support previous users who have the MPU6050.