EZBL - Porting and using ezbl_tool

Not enough, I'd say.  I just went through that.  This may help.
 
The command line is your friend. Look in the output window when you run that demo that sends the app to the bootloader.  You will see an invocation from java that looks like:
 
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microchip\MPLABX\v3.40\sys\java\jre1.8.0_91/bin/"java -jar "ezbl_integration/ezbl_tools.jar" --communicator ...
 
Now go to a command line and paste in that line.  On my machine, there is already a path to java, so I can dispense with that and just start from  prompt> java -jar "ezbl ...".  If you can change to the directory that ezbl_tools.jar is in, it becomes as simple as "java -jar ezbl_tools.jar"
 
Now after that, give it --?  and it will respond with a help message that tells you the tools can do 5 different things.
And, if you put one of those in, that is, put --blobber where I had --?, you will get a help description for the blobber option.  (Also, if you go back to the MPLAB output window and look up 2 lines, you will see the invocation of the same tool with the --blobber option; this is how the bl2 file gets created).
 
One other thing.  --communicator calls ezbl_comm.exe.  That one is a C++ program (built with Visual Studio, I believe) and it connects the output of communicator with some USB device that attaches to your EZBL-enabled device.
 
Good luck!
 

I respond myself regarding source code of ezbl tools.
 
I found in \ezbl-v2.11\ezbl_comm\ezbl_comm:

• ezbl_update.cpp
• logger.cpp

This tools above are the compiled ezbl_comm.exe that is used when --communicator option is called on ezbl_tools.jar.
 
At the beginning of the ezbl_update.cpp file, there is a comment which says:

/**
* To build this utility with gcc (ex: using Cygwin), try:
* gcc -o ezbl_comm ezbl_update.cpp logger.cpp
*/
 
I have not tried to build it in Linux. I will comment here how it goes when I do it.
After that, I have to modify it to support a socket instead of a UART. 

Just wanted to follow up to help anyone looking for this in the future. There are some compile errors with just running the GCC command recommended above (using EZBL v2.11). However, all errors seemed to be related to I2C so after commenting out the appropriate sections it does compile and run on Linux.

Thanks for the reply. It works for my needs by just commenting out the errors.
 
One other tip which is kinda lame - even on Linux the jars are looking for "ezbl_comm.exe" so you have to name your Linux executable with the .exe extension or modify the jars.