[Team Bossa] - AKA bring up Flutter on windows and mac

[taylor]

This is the developer thread for Team Bossa, which is a simple job to bring up Flutter on non-linux platforms.

Background:
Arduino uses the open source program BOSSA to program SAM-based Arduino boards. For some reason Flutter's CPU isn't recognized by the default BOSSA code, so we need to change it. I have done this for linux, but when looking at doing it for Windows I quickly remembered that I hate windows. Compiling this for windows and mac should be easy.

TODO:
Compile this code for windows and mac:
https://github.com/flutterwireless/BOSSA-Arduino

[andrewsc4]

Are the changes already in the BOSSA-Arduino code that is posted, or does that code need to be modified and tested?

[taylor]

Yeah, the changes are there. one line in FlashFactory.cpp was all it took.

[andya]

Just wanted to report that I have been working to compile Bossa on Windows and OSX. Puzzling out the correct tool set has been my major occupation. Has anyone gotten this code to compile and run yet?

[alec]

I've compiled on OS X and Fedora. OS X, with brew install wxmac, uses a Wx version of 3.0.2. Editing the Makefile to read the current version seems to work. WXVERSION=3.0.2 doesn't work, but =3.0 does. Here's how I edited the Makefile to work on both:

$ git diff
diff --git a/Makefile b/Makefile
index 1ae4b05..79d55bf 100644
--- a/Makefile
+++ b/Makefile
@@ -4,7 +4,7 @@
 # Version
 #
 VERSION=1.3a
-WXVERSION=2.8
+WXVERSION=$(shell wx-config --version | head -c 3)

[taylor]

Looking good team! Anyone have success with windows yet? We have some backers who want to help with libraries but are having trouble with USB passthrough on a VM.

Let me know if there is anything I can do to help. @alec care to share your binaries? I suppose we should add a binary folder to the repo and put them there. If you do that and push it, I'll accept it.
Thanks!

[cromer]

Hey guys, I'd like to second the binaries. I've got the non-Bossa modified Arduino running under OS X and compiling the example programs but I can't see the Flutter as a USB device on my mac. I don't know if this version would work/includes any drivers but I'd also like to work on it on my mac anyways.

[taylor]

@cromer it might be running a test program (which has no USB). Hold down B1 and plug in a USB cable for at least 1/4 second, then unplug and replug (this is a hard erase, there is a software erase option too where you just press and hold the button). Then it should show up without any driver install. However the factory version of BOSSA says invalid chip ID, so we need the modified binaries (just added the chip ID).

[cromer]

@cromer it might be running a test program (which has no USB). Hold down B1 and plug in a USB cable for at least 1/4 second, then unplug and replug (this is a hard erase, there is a software erase option too where you just press and hold the button). Then it should show up without any driver install. However the factory version of BOSSA says invalid chip ID, so we need the modified binaries (just added the chip ID).

Ah yeah, I actually figured out the hard reset from fiddling around trying to get the range test up and running. The chip ID error also explains why It doesn't work on the mac side of my testing. I'm still getting an error when I try to upload via my linux VM though (more on that here).

[tibmeister]

I will take a peek on the Win side of things and see if I can come up with something.

[taylor]

BOUNTY OFFER

To get this going, I am offering two bounties:

• One Free Flutter Basic for the first developer to post working 32 bit and 64 bit Windows binaries for this.
• One Free Flutter Basic for the first developer to post working 32 bit and 64 bit Mac binaries for this.

Rules: The winner will be the first person to post working binaries here in any form (dropbox link, github, etc), but to complete the bounty we will need this person to submit a pull request to our BOSSA github repository with the updated files and any changes to the code or configuration that was needed. One person may win two boards if they share both Mac and Windows binaries.

Does Mac need 32 bit and 64 bit or do they have some universal thing? If universal works, then only one binary is needed for the Mac.

EDIT: It appears Windows and Mac only need one binary. See my post below.

[andrewsc4]

I have been looking at the Windows BOSSA code for a bit, and either I am missing something, or it is more complex than I expected. It pulls in another set of code, the wxWidgets toolkit, which isn't that big a deal, but it also seems to require some Posix only libraries that aren't available for my development environment (I started with MS Visual Studio). I am going to try with MinGW, which hopefully will address this. I haven't worked with code shared between Windows and Linux before, so any thoughts would be appreciated.

[jeffcraighead]

One thing I was wondering is are you needing just the command line application or the full GUI. It seems that the GUI app is compiled against Wx 2.8, which is incompatible with 3.x from my understanding. So we will either need to modify the BOSSA code to work with 3.x or just remove the GUI bits alltogether.

[taylor]

Great questions everyone and good point! We DO NOT need the GUI at all. We only need the binary for bossac. On Linux that is just the files "bossac32" and "bossac64" that sit here in the installer:
https://github.com/flutterwireless/ArduinoCodebase/tree/master/build/linux/dist/tools

It looks like mac only needs one file, "bossac":
https://github.com/flutterwireless/ArduinoCodebase/tree/master/build/macosx/dist

And actually it seems windows only needs one file? "Bossac.exe" here:
https://github.com/flutterwireless/ArduinoCodebase/tree/master/build/windows

These files will allow the custom IDE to program your board. They will not change the operating system drivers, so your operating system should already recognize the boards as serial devices.
NOTE! The boards came programmed with a test program that you do not need. You must erase the board by applying power while holding B1. Do this for at least 1/4 second and the board will be erased. Then unplug it and plug it back in to get the device to reinitialize. In casual use you can program the board to software erase itself so the USB cable never needs to be removed, and we will have examples that describe this.

[fredspartan104]

I have compiled and test bossac for windows and Mac OSX but can not figure out how to push the commit to github. Also I have a way to use the new Board Manager in Arduino 1.6.3 to add the Flutter Board to Arduino, just have to setup a proxy with node.js and it should work that way we don't have to compile the Arduino IDE everytime.

[taylor]

Great to hear Fred! I responded to your e-mail, but is there any other way you can send me those files? Perhaps just via e-mail?

Also, we still can't use the default Arduino install as there are some other changes I had to make to the IDE to support this CPU. We need to push those changes back to the main Arduino codebase before we can use the vanilla IDE, it's not just the board definitions we need.

[rjindel]

Has any progress been made on this?
Do we have a working Windows version of this? I can't see any recent commits to github.