I've tried editing programmers.txt in /hardware in the Arduino directory as well as /hardware in the sketch directory, but nothing I do changes the list of programmers available. I can tell my edits are having no effect since even editing the names of programmers that are present has no effect. Is there some other super secret place where the programmer list is stored that I do not know about? I'm using Arduino on Windows 7. Changes to programmers.txt have immediate effects in Arduino 023 -- and because i can find my programmer there but not in 1.0.3, i've been reluctant to upgrade.
On my MacBook I edited:
/Applications/Arduino 1.0.5.app/Contents/Resources/Java/hardware/arduino/programmers.txt
The results of the edit were visible after I re-started the IDE.
I then tried creating the file:
/Users/john/Documents/Arduino/hardware/MyProgrammer/programmers.txt
After re-starting the IDE that, too, showed up under Tools->Programmer
Perhaps 1.0.3 has a bug. I think 1.0.5 is the most current and that's what I use.
hmm, the upgrade to 1.5.2 fixed my problem. thanks!