AVR Resources for Mac OS X

Kok Chen, W7AY [w7ay@arrl.net]
Last updated: May 23, 2008

AVR Tool Chain for Mac OS X

The AVR Tools can be obtained from various sources on the web. The following is one that has been bundled into a Mac OS X installer, so you would not need to use Terminal.app to download the files.

http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/~mseeman/resources/macmicro.html

The above package includes the gcc compiler and library to support the AVR. Please note that the pre-Leopard package does not include avrdude.

The tool chain will assume that you already have Xcode tools installed on your machine, even if you don't intend to use the Xcode IDE itself. XCode Tools should be on your Leopard DVD. Whenever needed, you can update the version from your Leopard DVD by going to http://developer.apple.com/tools/xcode/ .


AVR Project Template for Xcode

There are various Xcode templates that you can use with the AVR tool chain to do all of your code development (edit, compile, flagging errors, etc) with the Xcode IDE from Apple. I have created a set of Xcode template from what I have culled from the web into a set that blends neatly with AVR Tools. Currently the set only has templates for the ATtiny85 and the ATmega168. In many instances, all you will need to do to create a template for a different AVR device is to change the definition for the MCU variable in the Makefile in the template:



Or, you can simply tell Xcode to create a project for the ATmega168 and then editing the above line in your own the project.

This set of templates assumes that there is a file called program.c. If your program contains other files, you will need to add other dependencies into the Makefile manually. For example, the following will include a file uart.c as part of your firmware:



To obtain this set of Xcode templates, download the disk image from here and then copy the AVR folder from the disk image into the following folder on your hard disk:

/Developer/Library/Xcode/Project Templates/

Once the AVR templates are installed, you should see AVR item listed when you ask Xcode to create a New Project:



If you add more templates for other Atmel devices into the AVR template folder, they too will appear in the New Project list.

When you create a new ATtiny85 Project, you should see something like this:



As seen above, a program.c file appears in the project, so does the Makefile.

Note the Make Executable item in the Active Target popup menu at the top left of the project window. This selects the Make Executable target that you can see in the list view below the popup menu. When you click on the Build button (the hammer icon in the Xcode window's shelf), Xcode will execute this target.

If you double click on the Make Executable target (the concentric red circles) itself, you will find that Make Executable simply runs the Makefile ("/usr/bin/make"):



If you double click on the Clean target, you will find this:



Thus, if you were to change the Active Target menu to select Clean, clicking on Build will execute the "clean" objective in the makefile (i.e., "/usr/bin/make clean") . In the Makefile, you will notice that "clean" runs the Unix command "rm -f *.o *.hex *.elf *.map *~", which you can see when you open the Makefile in the Xcode editor:



i.e., if you select Clean as your Active Target and click on the Build button, Xcode will run the Unix command to remove all the files that Make Executable has created.

You can add other targets that you want, adding more entries to the Makefile and save the Project as an Xcode template in the Developer folder. Once you have a usable Xcode template, adding other templates is as easy as making changes and saving the Project itself as a template.