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?
