Known issues of avrdude

[mcuee]

We will use this discussion to list down the know issues of avrdude.

[mcuee]

Current issues listed as bugs..

https://github.com/avrdudes/avrdude/issues?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Aissue+label%3Abug

[mcuee]

Known issues for programmers.

1. CH341A:
   Not working with MSVC build: CH341A futher improvement -- to support lower clock AVR chips #1441
   Not working with lower speed AVRs: CH341A futher improvement -- to support MSVC build #1440

2. STK600
   Missing TPI, JTAG and UPDI support: Missing TPI, JTAG and UPDI support for the STK600 #1047

3. ftdi_syncbb
   Under Windows if you use D2XX driver (MSVC build), the speed will be quite slow compared to using libftdi (MinGW build).

• ftdi_syncbb: very slow D2XX based MSVC build compared to libftdi based MinGW build #1253

4. PICkit 2 does not work under macOS -- we need to migrate the code to use HIDAPI in order to support macOS

• Rework PICKit2 programmer to use libhidapi instead of libhid (which will make it work under macOS) #883

5. Parallel port based programmer will nork under Windows and macOS. The old version of avrdude ships with giveio.sys driver which may work under Windows XP but not later version of Windows. It was removed in the following PR.

• Remove 'windows' folder with giveio.sys driver #769

6. HIDAPI based programmer will not work under OpenBSD/NetBSD/Solaris as it is not supported on those platforms. If you rebuild your kernel to block the kernel HID driver, they may work under OpenBSD/NetBSD.

[mcuee]

Known issues for bootloaders.

General limitation

1. Bootloader can not program fuse bits

Known limitation of specific bootloaders (not avrdude limitation)

1. Arduino version of optiboot for Uno/Nano/etc is very old (4.4) and does not support EEPROM

• -c arduino issue with Arduino optiboot bootloader which does not support EEPROM #1377

2. Optiboot may have issues with EEPROM support

3. Optiboot may be prone to timeout in terminal mode. You may want to use -c urclock to help here.

4. Arduino version of stk500v2 bootloader has EEPROM bug

• Fix stk500v2 READ_EEPROM to properly read EEPROM arduino/ArduinoCore-avr#24

5. Even with the above EEPROM fix, the Arduino stk500v2 does not support page erase and has some limitations.
   Arduino ATmega2560 stk500v2 (Wiring) bootloader issue #1379

6. urboot is usually good not to time out in terminal mode, but under Windows there may still timeout issues (Windows limitations).

[mcuee]

@stefanrueger and @MCUdude

Please also add your inputs. Thanks. I can consolidate them.

[mcuee]

OS Support limitations (to be updated) for avrdude 7.0 and above

1. usually OS up to 5 years old should work fine even though you may need to upgrade certain dependancies (build tools and libraries) in order to build from the source codes,
2. OS up to 10 years old may still work fine but you may need to upgrade the dependancies involved in order to build from source codes.

Windows: Windows 7 onwards (take note Microsoft does not support Windows 7/8/8.1 now). Windows 7 was released in 2009.

Linux: Ubuntu 16.04 and later (older version may still work)

• Linux and macOS releases are missing -- static linking version preferred #1433

You may need pretty recent libgpiod if you want to get Linux GPIO to work with git main.

• Can not build on raspbian (Rasperry PI) with libgpiod-dev installed. #1446

macOS: Mac OS X Snow Leopard (10.6) i386/x64 (not so sure about PPC) and later
https://ports.macports.org/port/avrdude/details/

FreeBSD: FreeBSD 8 and later with proper libusb support (to be confirmed)

OpenBSD: ? HIDAPI based programmer will not work

NetBSD: ? HIDAPI based programmer will not work

Solaris: ? HIDAPI based programmer will not work

[mcuee]

Known Windows specific issues.

Bug

• avrdude MSVC build problem with USB composite device (avrdude-libusb library issue) -- low priority #968 (MSVC build only)
• Unable to build libavrdude dynamic library under Windows and macOS #1414

Lack of features compared to Linux and macOS
MSVC build

• To add libserialport support to Windows MSVC build #1552
• CH341A futher improvement -- to support MSVC build #1440
• ftdi_syncbb: very slow D2XX based MSVC build compared to libftdi based MinGW build #1253

MinGW build

• To adopt PR #1264 approach of using Readline replacement for MinGW build (Low Priority) #1271

[stefanrueger]

I like this discusssion thread. Is there a way we can convert some of our insights into the AVRDUDE .texi documentation?

[mcuee]

I will convert this into a Wiki page first.

[mcuee]

Done.
https://github.com/avrdudes/avrdude/wiki/Known-limitations-of-avrdude

[MCUdude]

I thing there's a typo. Isn't it CH341 the MSVC build are having trouble with?

[mcuee]

Fixed the typo.