As well as the `esp-idf-template <https://github.com/espressif/esp-idf-template>`_ project, ESP-IDF comes with some example projects on github in the :idf:`examples` directory.
Once you've found the project you want to work with, change to its directory and you can configure and build it.
This will flash the entire project (app, bootloader and partition table) to a new chip. Also if partition table has ota_data then this command will flash a initial ota_data.
It allows to run the newly loaded app from a factory partition (or the first OTA partition, if factory partition is not present).
The settings for serial port flashing can be configured with `make menuconfig`.
Once you've compiled your project, the "build" directory will contain a binary file with a name like "my_app.bin". This is an ESP32 image binary that can be loaded by the bootloader.
A single ESP32's flash can contain multiple apps, as well as many kinds of data (calibration data, filesystems, parameter storage, etc). For this reason, a partition table is flashed to offset 0x8000 in the flash.
Each entry in the partition table has a name (label), type (app, data, or something else), subtype and the offset in flash where the partition is loaded.
The simplest way to use the partition table is to `make menuconfig` and choose one of the simple predefined partition tables:
* "Single factory app, no OTA"
* "Factory app, two OTA definitions"
In both cases the factory app is flashed at offset 0x10000. If you `make partition_table` then it will print a summary of the partition table.
For more details about :doc:`partition tables <../api-guides/partition-tables>` and how to create custom variations, view the :doc:`documentation <../api-guides/partition-tables>`.
