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by
Dennis Clark
April marks my two year anniversary of
writing this column. This month, I got a question
that practically has me going full circle back to
one of my earlier questions about one of my
favorite topics: a NON Windows OS tool install.
Without further reminiscing, let’s get started.
Q. I use Linux for most everything and have started programming MCUs under Linux, but there are no good tutorials to
be found on how to do this from scratch. The
tutorials found are often about the GNU tool chain
and its installation, but I’m looking for the whole
thing.
Since you publish so many tutorials regarding
programming (but they are all WinX based), I
think it should be fun to publish one regarding the
open-source world of OS.
If the tutorial could include the building of a
tool chain and a makefile, and the use of any text
editor based “hello world” example, it would be
great! AVRDUDE is a great program to use under
Linux/MAC/WIN and also deserves a place in this
tutorial I ask for. Eclipse + plugin for AVR and a simple
LED trick on a breadboard would do the trick.
A breadboard based tutorial is a cheap and
good way to start regardless of which MCU or OS
or programming language one uses.
— Many thanks from Sweden and a
pleased subscriber!
A. Wow! That is a tall order! I see your point and I feel your pain! As a regular reader you have noticed that I am a Mac OS X person
and rarely write about Windows programming or
environments (the PIC being the exception, since it
is currently Windows-only based). Way back in
August ‘08, I wrote about setting up the avr-gcc
tool chain with Eclipse and an AVR plugin on the
OS X platform. It took me some time to fiddle
with everything but I have succeeded in getting
the full avr-gcc on the newest Eclipse platform to
work fine on Ubuntu 9. 10 (Kharmic Koala).
Following is my tutorial on how to accomplish this
feat. First off, I’d like to tip my hat to the avr-gcc
development crowd for their heroic work in
creating and supporting this open source project.
While I’m at it, I’d like to also thank the Eclipse
gang, Avrdude development gang, and last but
not least the developer of the AVR Eclipse plugin.
The combination of all of these fantastic open
source zealots has made our lives that much more
interesting now that we have these tools!
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