AVR toolchain in late 2018 - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Warhawk
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 06, 2018, 01:15:59 pm
content: Hi everyone,I have not touched AVRs since ~2008 when WinAVR and the AVR studio v4 were the right combination. However, a lot has changed since then. Atmel became a part of Microchip and WinAVR seems to be abandoned. I have a tiny design with PIC10F322 but I am thinking about replacing it by ATtiny10. I like Microchip and worked with PICs before but the crippled XC8 compiler drives me mad. Is there still an open-source, frustration-free, non-crippled toolchain which would support ATtiny10 and ideally worked in Linux?PS:STK500 and USBasp are my friends.Thanks for any tip.

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 06, 2018, 02:30:23 pm
content: avr-gcc, avrdude, make and a text editor of your choice.

author: TK
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 06, 2018, 03:20:07 pm
content: Microchip XC8 C compiler now supports AVR microcontrollers. You can also use MPLAB X (V5 or higher) to develop AVR programs (beta version)

author: T3sl4co1l
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 06, 2018, 04:44:01 pm
content: I've found reasonable success with Code::Blocks IDE, avr-gcc, avrdude and usblibc or whatever it is to interface with the programmer (I have a similarly ancient AVRISPMKII which continues to work).I posted about this at the time; maybe try searching some of these terms, see if you can find it?Tim

author: HB9EVI
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 06, 2018, 06:17:09 pm
content: Codeblocks is a nice IDE; Eclipse with the AVR MCU Plugin works as well

author: richardman
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 06, 2018, 07:29:54 pm
content: STK500 is incredibly ancient ;-) You should move to a newer board.

author: westfw
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 06, 2018, 09:25:10 pm
content: The basic toolchain for AVR (windows, mac, linux) can be downloaded here:https://www.microchip.com/mplab/avr-support/avr-and-arm-toolchains-c-compilersTheseare the CLI tools: avr-gcc, binutils, and avr-libc. You'll need an editor or IDE, make, and something like avrdude to complete a usable development environment.

author: technix
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 06, 2018, 09:30:24 pm
content: If you know how to build GCC from source, you can just grab mainline GCC and build it targeting AVR. This way you get the mainline GCC 8.2.

author: Warhawk
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 07, 2018, 01:53:15 pm
content: Thanks everyone, this already helps. I'll try the avr-gcc + make + avrdude option.

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 07, 2018, 01:58:50 pm
content: i still keep my AVR Studio 4 installer and ancient china cloned AVRISPMKII. someone has said if it aint broke dont upgrade it. i'm still on WinXP.

author: TK
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 07, 2018, 02:14:31 pm
content: Microchip added some new AVR MCUs and I guess they will only be supported by AVR Studio 7 and MPLAB X...

author: technix
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 08, 2018, 02:05:24 am
content: Quote from: TK on November 07, 2018, 02:14:31 pmGIven the fact that AVR GCC is in fact GCC (under GPL) Microchip will have to release source code and people will try to mainline it with the current stock GCC branch.

author: richardman
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 08, 2018, 10:07:58 am
content: Quote from: technix on November 08, 2018, 02:05:24 amI suspect the problems being referred is that the older Studio (Studio 4.x) would not have the GUI control and device config for the new devices.

author: sleemanj
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 08, 2018, 10:56:54 am
content: You can always download the Arduino IDE - you don't have to use it but it just provides a simple way to get your toolchain including avr-gcc and avrdude ready to go.You should find it in the hardware\tools\avr directory structure in your arduino installation directory. ie, {path-to-arduino}/hardware/tools/avr/bin/avr-gccIn fact, if you really wanted, you can use the ArduinoIDE and thearduino ecosystem to program the Tiny10, not totally useful, but there you go