I just downloaded the source for AVRDUDE 6.0.1, compiled it (Linux 64 bit) and installed it.
OMG!!! What the heck did they do? I tested it by first flashing a bootloader into my test MEGA2560 board (using an Atmel AVRISPMkII). It took like 2 seconds to flash whereas before it took around 15 to 20 seconds (didn't time it - that's my guess).
So I then tried to upload a sketch, thinking the bootloader CAN'T be in there properly after such a fast flashing. Wrong. The board is working fine.
Has anyone else noticed this and/or have any idea why this AVRDUDE is SO much faster?
I believe that's the version where they finally do "smart verify", and only read the pages that were actually written.
In the older version, it would say "well, the last address I programmed was 256k-1, so I guess I have to verify all of 0 to 256k.
Now it says "I wrote 8k from 256k-8k to 256k-1, so I only need to verify that 8k."
Yep.
It keeps a list of multiple regions and only burns the regions that are in the hex file.
And I think it properly deals with 0xff pages that are in the image as well.
(i.e. it doesn't just blindly skip over those).
I've been running my own version of 5.11.1 that had that update in it for
quite some time. (2+ years)
I also patch the avrdude libusb code so it works properly with the AVR Dragon
when used with the Arduino IDE or the optiboot makefiles - without the patch
you can't use the AVR dragon to burn a bootloader with the IDE or the optiboot makefiles
unless you modify them instead.
With my USBASP programmer, It takes less than 1 second to burn
an optiboot bootloader.
Kind of funny, in that I modified the USBASP firmware to change the LED
colors based on reading vs writing. With the smarter avrdude, you don't
even have time to see anything.
I just downloaded the source for AVRDUDE 6.0.1, compiled it (Linux 64 bit) and installed it.
downloaded and compiled, sheesh you want to get a distro with package management, i've been using 6.0.1 for months on debian
bperrybap:
It isn't quite as simple as just using a distro with package management.
I'm using Linux Mint 13 and the latest avrdude in their repo is 5.11.1
--- bill
Same here. I'm running Ubuntu and the "official" distribution package is v5.11.1
It's been quite a while since I looked (oct 2011), but from what I remember the official 5.11.1 didn't have
the smarter flash burning fix in it. There was a modified 5.11.1 with tar ball
(avrdude-5.11svn-20111019.tar.gz ) that did.
That is the source I started with before I added my own patches.
I do the patches to fix bug #34339, which is what causes
the the IDE and the optiboot makefile to not work on the AVR dragon
on Linux and WIndows (don't have Mac but it is probably an issue there too).
(#34339 is still not fixed in the latest avrdude)
From looking at the log for 6.x there are many changes & updates.
While they all seem to look good and reasonable, there are probably
some people that will have things break, since some functionality was
removed, the config file format changed, and there are some subtle
changes to how some options work.
ah yes, as both mint and ubuntu are based off of debian, it would seem that the latest package in stable is 5.11, i'm using debian unstable which is why i got 6.0.1 info