Command line Arduino compiling and uploading? - linux

Question

How do I compile and upload Arduino sketches from the command line on Mac and Linux? I've installed the Arduino programming environment. Are there some sample makefiles anywhere?

Answer 1

There is a command-line Arduino toolkit named Ino. It just does that.

Answer 2

Compiling and uploading sketches (as apposed to C/C++ sources) on the command line (on Windows, Mac, and Linux) is supported directly via flags to the arduino executable since 1.5.0.
An ino can be compiled and uploaded with arduino --upload [sketch.ino]
Documentation

Answer 3

This is my boilerplate gnu make include for AVR projects, you may need to adapt some of it to fit your environment. It creates dependencies, has a host of standard gcc options I find useful or that optimize for size, as well as a library dir I use. I used this successfully to compile arduino software, I also previously hacked the PdePreprocessor in the arduino editor to be run from the command line to generate all the voodoo:
https://github.com/wesen/mididuino/blob/master/app/src/processing/app/preproc/PdePreprocessor.java
#
# generic AVR makefile
#
# (c) July 2011 - Manuel Odendahl - wesen#ruinwesen.com
#
# include this into your main Makefile, after having defined TARGET and TARGET_OBJS
all: $(TARGET).hex
CURDIR := $(dir $(lastword $(MAKEFILE_LIST)))
include $(CURDIR)MidiCtrl.mk
CC = avr-gcc
CXX = avr-g++
OBJCOPY = avr-objcopy
AVR_ARCH ?= atmega64
LDAVR_ARCH ?= avrmega64
FLASH_PROTOCOL = jtag2
CFLAGS += -Os -ffunction-sections -DAVR -I. -mmcu=$(AVR_ARCH) -mcall-prologues -fshort-enums -fpack-struct -Wall -Werror
CFLAGS += -Wall -DLITTLE_ENDIAN -g -flto
CFLAGS += no-tree-loop-optimize -ffreestanding -morder1 -funsigned-char -funsigned-bitfields -fshort-enums -fpack-struct
CFLAGS += -fdata-sections -fno-split-wide-types -fno-inline-small-functions -mcall-prologues
CLDFLAGS += -Wl,--relax,--gc-sections -ffunction-sections
CLDFLAGS += -mmcu=$(AVR_ARCH)
LDFLAGS = -m $(LDAVR_ARCH) -M
# generate list
# CFLAGS += -Wa,-adhlns=$#.lst
%.o: %.cpp
$(CXX) $(CXXFLAGS) -c $< -o $#
%.o: %.c
$(CC) $(CFLAGS) -c $< -o $#
%.o: %.s
$(CC) $(CFLAGS) -c $< -o $#
%.s: %.c
$(CC) -S $(CFLAGS) -fverbose-asm $< -o $#
%.o: %.S
$(CC) $(CFLAGS) -c $< -o $#
%.syx: %.hex
ihex2sysex $< $#
%.srec: %.elf
$(OBJCOPY) -j .text -j .data -O srec $< $#
%.hex: %.elf
$(OBJCOPY) -j .text -j .data -O ihex $< $#
%.ee_srec: %.elf
$(OBJCOPY) -j .eeprom --change-section-lma .eeprom=0 -O srec $< $#
AVR_BASE_DIR ?= $(abspath $(CURDIR)..)
AVR_LIB_DIR ?= $(AVR_BASE_DIR)/hardware/libraries
AVR_LIBS += CommonTools Midi
AVR_LIB_DIRS += $(foreach lib,$(AVR_LIBS),$(AVR_LIB_DIR)/$(lib))
AVR_INC_FLAGS += $(foreach dir,$(AVR_LIB_DIRS),-I$(dir))
AVR_OBJS += $(foreach dir,$(AVR_LIB_DIRS),$(foreach file,$(wildcard $(dir)/*.cpp),$(subst .cpp,.o,$(file))))
AVR_OBJS += $(foreach dir,$(AVR_LIB_DIRS),$(foreach file,$(filter-out $(AVR_HOST_EXCLUDE),$(wildcard $(dir)/*.c)),$(subst .c,.o,$(file))))
AVR_DEPS += $(subst .o,.d,$(AVR_OBJS))
# AVR_HOST_EXCLUDE can be used to exclude specific files later on
CXXFLAGS += $(AVR_INC_FLAGS)
CFLAGS += $(AVR_INC_FLAGS)
CXXFlags += -Werror -Wall
CFLAGS += -Werror -Wall
default: all
%.d:%.c
set -e; $(CC) -MM $(CFLAGS) $< \
| sed 's,\($*\)\.o[ :]*,\1.o $# : ,g' > $# ; \
[ -s $# ] || rm -f $#
%.d:%.cpp
set -e; $(CXX) -MM $(CXXFLAGS) $< \
| sed 's,\($*\)\.o[ :]*,\1.o $# : ,g' > $# ; \
[ -s $# ] || rm -f $#
%.host.d:%.c
set -e; $(CC) -MM $(CFLAGS) $< \
| sed 's,\($*\)\.o[ :]*,\1.o $# : ,g' > $# ; \
[ -s $# ] || rm -f $#
%.host.d:%.cpp
set -e; $(CXX) -MM $(CXXFLAGS) $< \
| sed 's,\($*\)\.o[ :]*,\1.o $# : ,g' > $# ; \
[ -s $# ] || rm -f $#
printlibs:
echo $(AVR_LIBS)
$(TARGET).elf: $(TARGET).o $(TARGET_OBJS) $(AVR_OBJS)
$(CXX) $(CLDFLAGS) -g -o $# $^
_clean:
- rm *.elf *.hex *.o .midictrl.flags
libclean:
rm -rf $(TARGET_OBJS) $(OBJS)
# concrete settings for development environment
UNAME=$(shell uname)
ISWIN=$(findstring CYGWIN,$(UNAME))
ISMAC=$(findstring Darwin,$(UNAME))
CC = avr-gcc
CXX = avr-g++
OBJCOPY = avr-objcopy
AVR_ARCH = atmega64
F_CPU = 16000000L
CORE = minicommand2

Answer 4

Official CLI tool
The arduino team is developing a cli client
https://github.com/arduino/arduino-cli
Announcement: https://blog.arduino.cc/2018/08/24/announcing-the-arduino-command-line-interface-cli/
You can do almost everything with this, from downloading boards and libraries, to compile and upload scripts. What's missing is the monitoring part.
To monitor in linux you can still use the commands stty to configure port and cat to read it.
stty -F /dev/ttyACM0 38400 # <-- Baud rate. The number in Serial.begin()
cat /dev/ttyACM0 # <-- Port
You can find the port with arduino-cli
arduino-cli board list
Full instructions in the Github repo and the man page:
$ arduino-cli Arduino Command Line Interface (arduino-cli).
Usage: arduino-cli [command]
Examples: arduino <command> [flags...]
Available Commands:
board Arduino board commands.
compile Compiles Arduino sketches.
config Arduino Configuration Commands.
core Arduino Core operations.
help Help about any command
lib Arduino commands about libraries.
sketch Arduino CLI Sketch Commands.
upload Upload Arduino sketches.
version Shows version number of Arduino CLI.

Answer 5

You need to actually create a viable cpp file out of your arduino sketch. The arduino environment does that for you automatically. One trick to get to those files is to open your arduino preferences.txt (it's in ~/Library/Arduino on the mac, I think in your Documents and Settings or Application Data on windows, don't remember exactly), and set build.verbose=true and upload.verbose=true. Start arduino, and compile your sketch (don't upload it). The console at the bottom will show you which files were compiled. You can now go to that directory, which will contain the cpp file, and compiled object files for all the core arduino objects. You can copy those into your project and use the cpp file to do further hacking. Let me know if you need more information about the Makefile, I can provide you with those I have.

Answer 6

You can actually use the arduino GUI to compile and upload, and set the editor to external in the preferences. That way, you can edit the C++ (PDE) files from xcode, and have arduino generate the actual CPP and build the whole shebang.
You can also use XCode to write plain C++/C for the arduino, using the avr-gcc compiler.
Have a look at: https://stackoverflow.com/a/8192762/153835
You can then use the plain avrdude upload tool to program the arduino. Have a look at: http://www.ladyada.net/library/arduino/bootloader.html
It used to be that the protocol spoken by Arduino was a modification of the STK500 protocol, and that only the avrdude bundled with arduino could speak it. I don't know if the mainstream avrdude was upgraded, or if you still have to resort to the avrdude inside the Arduino folder.

Answer 7

You can use biicode (it's a project I'm working in) which is based on CMake (but you don't actually need to write any cmake file) and is also a tool to manage Arduino libraries
It's main features are:
Dependencies resolution, transitively, as maven does, but without config files: reads dependencies directly from source code.
Central repository, anyone can upload their libraries. They can be explored, navigated and discovered in the web
Version control: it checks versions compatibility and allows safe updates of dependencies
You can use it with any text editor (it has optional eclipse integration)
It manages project setup and compilations, flashes generated firmware to the board
You can see a quick demo here and read more in the documentation.

Answer 8

If you can use cmake then there are some links in the same web (this and this for example). GNU makefile is a little bit different from cmake but nothing complicated. Just Google a little bit and you can find a lot of Makefile examples how to compile AVR code.

Answer 9

I use platformio, quite like it. It also has extensions into Visual Studio Code, so you can do everything from there. It has library manager and uploader built-in.
My setup is a NFS drive where I have the code, mounted on my linux laptop, and also mounted on my Raspberry Pi that sits next to my Arduino's.
When it's time to compile, I do so on my laptop, and as the RPi is next to the Arduino, I upload from there..
After installing and configuring, the basics are simple;
'platformio run' will compile your code.
'platformio run -t upload' will compile & upload.
I also have a bash function to upload without compiling;
function th(){
if [ "${1}" = "upload" ];then
if [ ! -f platformio.ini ]; then
echo platformio.ini not found
else
UPLOAD_PORT=`cat platformio.ini | grep upload_port | awk '{print $3}'`
if [ "${UPLOAD_PORT}" = "" ]; then
echo no upload port
else
if [ "${2}" != "" ]; then
FIRMWARE=${2}
else
#the firmware location seems to have moved
# FIRMWARE='.pioenvs/megaatmega2560/firmware.hex'
FIRMWARE='.pio/build/megaatmega2560/firmware.hex'
fi
if [ -f "${FIRMWARE}" ]; then
avrdude -v -p atmega2560 -C /home/stevenk/.platformio/packages/tool-avrdude/avrdude.conf -c wiring -b 115200 -D -P "${UPLOAD_PORT}" -U flash:w:$FIRMWARE:i
else
echo ${FIRMWARE} not found
fi
fi
fi
else
wget --timeout 8 -qO- http://192.168.178.212/$1
fi
}

Answer 10

If you do not insist on make there is also scons/sconstruct scons/sconstruct. Since this in basically written in Python it is much simpler to tweak than make. In addition it can be debugged with any Python debugger.

Answer 11

I have a makefile for Arduino which can be used to compile and upload Arduino (or plain AVR C) programs to Arduino.
Following are some of the important features of this makefile
Supports upload via Arduino as ISP or any programmer
Supports compiling plain AVR C programs
Supports user as well as system libraries.
Generate assembly and symbol files
Program using alternate Arduino core (like ATtiny or Arduino alternate cores)

Answer 12

There's an official Arduino CLI tool:
https://blog.arduino.cc/2021/02/15/arduino-cli-0-16-0-is-ready-for-you-all/?queryID=undefined
It works pretty well, in my opinion. The GitHub repo is here:
https://github.com/arduino/arduino-cli
It's version 0.16.0. so sort of beta, but not really....

Answer 13

You can find the libraries and sample codes included in the Arduino under "file->examples".