If you have never used it before, avr-size is a very useful command that does a relatively simple thing – it tells you how large your compiled avr-gcc programs are.  This is very useful knowledge when you are trying to fit as much code as possible into a part with only a few K of flash memory.  Additionally, the actual flash footprint of an AVR program is not something you can easily distill from a .hex file.  Hex files are usually much larger than the actual compiled code due to the overhead of that file format.

avr-size comes with the binutils-avr package in Ubuntu (and is installed as part of WinAVR and CrossPack on Windows and OSX, respectively).  Unfortunately, Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) ships with a broken version of avr-size that doesn’t include the necessary patches to support the AVR.

To see if your avr-size is working, open a Terminal in Lucid and try executing this command on a compiled avr-gcc .elf file of your choice:

avr-size -C --mcu=attiny2313 main.elf

You’ll probably see something like this:

avr-size: invalid option -- 'C'
Usage: avr-size [option(s)] [file(s)]
Displays the sizes of sections inside binary files
If no input file(s) are specified, a.out is assumed
The options are:
-A|-B     --format={sysv|berkeley}  Select output style (default is berkeley)
-o|-d|-x  --radix={8|10|16}         Display numbers in octal, decimal or hex
-t        --totals                  Display the total sizes (Berkeley only)
--common                  Display total size for *COM* syms
--target=<bfdname>        Set the binary file format
@<file>                   Read options from <file>
-h        --help                    Display this information
-v        --version                 Display the program's version
avr-size: supported targets: elf32-avr elf32-little elf32-big srec symbolsrec verilog tekhex binary ihex


Bad news, but it’s not surprising. You have the broken version of avr-size that comes with binutils-avr for Lucid.

The solution:

I was able to fix this issue by installing the binutils-avr package for Debian Squeeze, an approach I learned about from this Ubuntu bug report.

To download the Debian binutils-avr package, either go to the Debian package repository or execute this command:

wget "http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/pool/main/b/binutils-avr/binutils-avr_2.20.1-1_amd64.deb"

Now install the package by double clicking on it or executing:

sudo dpkg -i binutils-avr_2.20.1-1_amd64.deb

If you tell Ubuntu to “hold” the package you just installed, it should stop trying to revert to the broken version in the Lucid repository every time you run a system update:

echo "binutils-avr hold" | sudo dpkg --set-selections

You can check the hold status by running

sudo dpkg --get-selections | grep binutils-avr


The status should be shown as “hold” (not “install”).

Now if you run avr-size, you should see the special AVR option ‘-C’ is now present.

jkeyzer@atom:~$ avr-size --help

Usage: avr-size [option(s)] [file(s)]
Displays the sizes of sections inside binary files
If no input file(s) are specified, a.out is assumed
The options are:
-A|-B|-C  --format={sysv|berkeley|avr}  Select output style (default is berkeley)
--mcu=<avrmcu>            MCU name for AVR format only
-o|-d|-x  --radix={8|10|16}         Display numbers in octal, decimal or hex
-t        --totals                  Display the total sizes (Berkeley only)
--common                  Display total size for *COM* syms
--target=<bfdname>        Set the binary file format
@<file>                   Read options from <file>
-h        --help                    Display this information
-v        --version                 Display the program's version
avr-size: supported targets: elf32-avr coff-avr coff-ext-avr elf32-little elf32-big srec symbolsrec verilog tekhex binary ihex

Report bugs to <http://www.sourceware.org/bugzilla/>

You can also test it out on a compiled .elf file:

jkeyzer@atom:~$ avr-size -C --mcu=attiny2313 main.elf

AVR Memory Usage
----------------
Device: attiny2313

Program: 2008 bytes (98.0% Full)
(.text + .data + .bootloader)

Data: 23 bytes (18.0% Full)
(.data + .bss + .noinit)

It works!  You now have a working avr-size command for Ubuntu.

There is a good chance this package will eventually be fixed in the Lucid repository, but based on the bug report above, it could be a while (2012?) before we see an update.  Until then, installing the Debian package seems to be a good solution.

If anyone reading this is close to the Ubuntu package maintainers, can you please kick them about this issue?