Creating AVRDUDE crash dumps on Windows

If AVRDUDE crashes on your computer, it is important to find the root cause of the problem. If AVRDUDE crashes consistently, it is often sufficient to provide the steps that cause the problem, such as the exact command being used. If the problem is more complicated, or cannot be reproduced, you can submit a Windows minidump.

Creating a Windows minidump

If you run into a problem that cannot be easily reproduced, you should create a minidump of the crashing application. A minidump is a small file that contains a lot of useful information regarding the application crash, such as exact version of the executable, where to find debugging symbols, stack traces, bits of memory, etc.

To create a minidump, do the following:

• Download procdump from Microsoft Process Utitities.
• Unzip procdump.exe into the folder that contains your avrdude.exe.
• Run procdump with the command procdump -accepteula -e -w -x ., followed by the full avrdude command you are using.

For instance, if you run AVRDUDE with the command

avrdude -c usbtiny -p m328p -U flash:w:main.hex:i

run the following command instead:

procdump -accepteula -e -w -x . avrdude -c usbtiny -p m328p -U flash:w:main.hex:i

When AVRDUDE crashes, procdump will catch the execption and create a minidump. Now you can Create a new Issue and attach that minidump to that issue.