Re: [avr-chat] UISP / AVRDude : what to choose ?

[E. Weddington]

Vincent Trouilliez wrote:

> Today's question : I gather that there are two programs that exist to
> download a program into the AVR : AvrDude and UISP. Why are they 2 tools
> for seemingly doing the same job ? Which one is more appropriate in what
> situation ?
>  
Historical reasons. IIRC, uisp came first and has been around the
longest. However, to add support for a new device, you have to add code
and rebuild the program. avrdude started off with the name "avrprog" and
was specific to FreeBSD. The author, Brian Dean, then did two things:
rename the program to "avrdude" (to avoid conflicts) and with help, got
cross-platform support built in. avrdude now builds and runs on FreeBSD,
Linux, Windows, Mac OS X. It might even work on NetBSD too. And I'm not
sure whether someone has tried it on Solaris. Anyway, another big
advantage is that to add support for a new device in avrdude, one does
NOT have to rebuild the software. Support is added into a
"configuration" text file that is read by the program. You can also add
support for different types of hardware parallel programmers in the
configuration file as well. So avrdude is more flexible than uisp.

IIRC, there has been a lot of work recently to add functionality in
avrdude to completely copy all available functionality in uisp. This is
still an ongoing process, and one of the things still missing is to make
sure that all AVR devices are supported in avrdude that is supported in
uisp. The goal is to eventually deprecate the usage of uisp as avrdude
is better supported (i.e., there are more developers working on avrdude
then there is on uisp).

So, in the end, it's completely up to you as to which program you want
to use. If it's still easier for you to use uisp, then go ahead and use
it. Just realise that if you run into bugs or problems, you're more
likely to get it fixed with avrdude than with uisp.


> The thing is, I have the latest UISP version in my Linux distro's
> repository, but I don't have AvrDude. Since I am hopeless at compiling
> things from source, I would favour UISP as it comes easy.
>
>  

Unfortunately, that's one of the current weaknesses with avrdude. The
Linux developer of avrdude had to quit some time back. Nobody has
stepped to replace him to do testing and building of a Linux executable.
But it should still be able to be built from source; the instructions
should be found in the avrdude user manual.

If you have specific questions about avrdude, try taking a look at the
user manual first, or you can ask on the avrdude mailing list
(instructions can be found at the avrdude project on Savannah).

HTH
Eric