Hah! solved, please disregard my previous message. Well, partly solved,

In the OVMS developer guide, 'Please ensure that you have the release version ( of the esp-idf getstarted guide instructions, ie: this link: https://docs.espressif.com/projects/esp-idf/en/release-v3.1/get-started/index.html ) matching the OVMS branch of esp-idf, currently 3.1

I went through the 3.1 version esp-idf setup instructions (installing the older xtensa toolchain alongside the openvehicles esp-idf branch, and setting paths).

Following an adventure with older version of pyserial causing an issue, hello_world compiles and works on a plain ESP32 board, using the OVMS esp-idf. Good.

Try compiling OVMS, but fails. doa.

~/Leaf/OVMS/v3/vehicle/OVMS.V3$ make
Toolchain path: /home/dklein/Leaf/OVMS/xtensa-esp32-elf/bin/xtensa-esp32-elf-gcc
Toolchain version: crosstool-ng-1.22.0-80-g6c4433a
Compiler version: 5.2.0
Python requirements from /homez/dklein/Documents/Projects/Leaf/OVMS/esp-idf/requirements.txt are satisfied.

App "ovms3" version: 3.2.008-15-gca307f88-dirty
make[1]: *** No rule to make target '/homez/dklein/Documents/Projects/vehicles/OVMS/v3/vehicle/OVMS.V3/components/console/split_argv.
c', needed by 'split_argv.o'. Stop.
/home/dklein/Documents/Projects/Leaf/OVMS/esp-idf/make/project.mk:552: recipe for target 'component-console-build' failed
make: *** [component-console-build] Error 2

Thanks Again, Dale