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Dwarf V0.2 beta 1 release

Last updated: June 10, 2010, 11:11 a.m.

For the impatient:

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I've been working on improvements to Dwarf for a while. Check out the github repo for detailed changes and current development release. This is a beta release, i.e. it NEEDS TESTING. I've used it a little for actual projects and seems to be working okay but it certainly hasn't been extensively tested.

Major Changes The manual connect button has been removed. I've never used this button and felt it complicated the interface. The only reason you're likely to miss this is if you were using Dwarf to program serial EEPROMs which don't auto-detect like PICs. If you're working at that level I'm hoping you can use the command line instead. If you used this feature LET ME KNOW! I can add it again.

The compile button has been removed The compile button was largely useless. Due to the way gpasm/gplink work you could not even use the RES directive to dynamically assign registers and had to do all development in a single file to use this compile button. I looked into implementing a project management mode that would allow multi-file compilation and linking but this added far too much complexity as Dwarf is meant to be very simple. (There may well be a more sophisticated "integrated environment" under development that will do compilation properly, watch this space!)

Alterations to the UI The file open button has been altered to get around a bug in file type filters in GTK itself. The functionality has not been significantly altered just the widget set and hence the appearance to a certain extent. The chip model is no longer editable in line with the new auto-only connect mode. The exit button has been altered to be a standard stock-icon. This should mean it gets translated with the UI theme.

Other features

Still to do Before the final 0.2 release I need to update the documentation and significant testing needs to be done. An install script for pk2cmd is being written and I'm considering wrapping up Dwarf in a .deb for Ubuntu/Debian users.

For you to do Please try out this software and give me feedback particularly bug reports and feature request. You can contact me by posting a response, by email or Twitter.

Section:
Projects
Tags:
linux,
Dwarf,
PicKit2

Comments

Great Program

11 Apr 2012 - 03:42 Z.K.

I just wanted to say I think this is a great program and just what I needed. It is definitely better than using the commandline. I did have one issue when I tried to use a launcher to start the application. It would not run and it ended up being an issue with the file and directory paths and where the pik2cmd data file is kept. I modified the python code so it works properly now.

Unable to see PK2DeviceFile.dat file

27 Sep 2012 - 20:06 Z.K.

Well, I have not actually tried programming a chip yet, but when I first started it up, this new version was unable to see the PK2DeviceFile.dat file; I don't remember if I had this problem on the old version. Yes, I setup the paths and I double checked even. The pk2cmd commandline program works as in your other tutorial. So, I just modified your python script in the opts variable like so " opts = ["-B/usr/share/pk2/ -P"] ". Maybe you could add a way to navigate to the folder and add the path using your GUI.

Unable to see PK2DeviceFile.dat file

28 Sep 2012 - 09:56 nathan

Thanks for the info. Odd that it works without the -B option from the command line. It is a bit of a weird setup having a non-executable needing to be added to the system path like that. Might be worth adding a setting to let you specify it like you say. I'll see what time I have.

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