Installation of firmware and hardware setup

There are only a few steps necessary for installing the dw-link firmware on the hardware debugger. For the hardware setup, you need a breadboard or a development board with one of the chips that speaks debugWIRE.

Firmware installation

Since the firmware of the hardware debugger comes in the form of an Arduino sketch, you need to download, first of all, the Arduino IDE or Arduino CLI, if you have not done that already. You can also use PlatformIO as an alternative.

Second, you need to download the dw-link firmware. If you use PlatformIO, note that the repository is already prepared to be opened as a PlatformIO project, i.e., it contains a platformio.ini file. Either download/clone the dw-link repository or download a release.

Third, you have to connect your future hardware debugger, i.e., the ATmega328 board, to your computer, select the right board in the Arduino IDE, and upload the dw-link.ino sketch to the board. Similarly, in PlatformIO, you have to choose the right board and choose the Upload menu entry.

Setting up the debugging software

Finally, you need to install the debugging software on the host.

Installing AVR-GDB

If you want to perform debugging using a command-line interface, you only need to install avr-gdb, which is most probably already installed on your host anyway. On Linux, the package manager of your choice will solve the problem. Note that the corresponding package is named gdb-avr! On macOS, use Homebrew. After having installed Homebrew, type:

xcode-select --install
brew tap osx-cross/avr
brew install avr-gdb

Under Windows, you can download a version from Zak's avr-gcc-build repository.

Installing board packages for the Arduino IDE 2

Depending on what chips you want to debug, you need to install three new board packages. Open the Preferences dialog of the Arduino IDE and paste the following three URLs into the list of Additional boards manager URLs:

https://felias-fogg.github.io/ATTinyCore/package_drazzy.com_ATTinyCore_index.json
https://MCUdude.github.io/MicroCore/package_MCUdude_MicroCore_index.json
https://MCUdude.github.io/MiniCore/package_MCUdude_MiniCore_index.json

The first one is for all classical ATtinys, the second one is for the ATtiny13(a), and the third one is for all ATtinyX8s, including the ATmega328P, which is the MCU on the Arduino Uno board.

Then, you need to start the Boards Manager, which you find under Tools-->Board. Install MiniCore, MicroCore, and/or ATTinyCore, choosing the most recent version. Note that the packages include tools that might be incompatible with older OS versions. If you encounter problems when starting the debugging software, consult the troubleshooting section on startup problems.