Re: [avr-gcc-list] [ANN] WinAVR 20030312 Released

[E. Weddington]

On 12 Mar 2003 at 23:49, David Brown wrote:

> 
> This is great!  I'm now using avarice and avr-gdb instead of AVR
> Studio - finally I can inspect structures, arrays, pointers,
> bitfields, enums, etc. I have a couple of questions/comments:
> 
> I don't think it is a good idea for the installer to add winavr bin
> directories to the path in this way.  It is a pain if you already have
> similar unix-type utilities on your path - suddenly the winavr
> versions are first in line.  To avoid conflicts with existing paths, I
> would prefer the path modifications to be optional, and to be added to
> the end of the path rather than the beginning.  Of course, the changes
> are of a help to many people, and users like me who like to have
> complicated systems can modify our paths manually afterwards.

Ok, ok, ok. I added the automatic installation of the path because 
there were more newbies out there who didn't know the first thing 
about what an environment variable was much less how to change it. 
There's no pleasing everybody.

I've seen other software automatically install dirs on the path 
without user permission for the simple fact that the software cannot 
easily run without it. I put if first in the path because somebody 
may have an old AVR Freaks version. In that case, if the WinAVR path 
came later, then the toolset will default to old versions from AVR 
Freaks, definitely a no no. The best I could do would probably be to 
add more docs in the README about how to change the PATH environment 
variable. At least I currently document what dirs get put on the path 
and what is included in the directories; and I specifically say that 
this is for the user to be able to swap out sets of Unix utilities if 
they want to.
 
> The gdb build is command-line only.  Did you try to build insight?  As
> an alternative, I like gvd ( http://libre.act-europe.fr/gvd/ ) as
> front-end for gdb.  It is very easy to get it running (use
> "c:\gvd-1.2.5\bin\gvd --debugger c:\winavr\bin\avr-gdb program.elf" ).

The GDB build and the AVaRICE build were donated by Marc Wetzel (as 
stated in the README.txt). These were added relatively recently so I 
hadn't had time to look into building Insight.

I recently discovered the link to gvd. I don't know much about it 
other than it looks like one can download binaries for NT (according 
to web site) and that it works with a command-line version of GDB. I 
couldn't figure out from their website if gvd will work on Win 98 / 
95 though.

To be honest, I have had zero experience with either GDB or AVaRICE. 
Perhaps you or others can share their experience with the Windows 
platform versions?
 
> Am I right in thinking that I need to use avarice to burn a new
> program into the flash before debugging, or is it possible to do it
> via gdb?

FYI, you can also program your device using the included avrdude 
software.
 
Eric Weddington