In theory, you can use any operating system to build. However, we are using mainly OS X (10.10 and 10.11) and Ubuntu 14.04. Windows should work with no issues using cygwin and winavr. NOTE: On any of ...
Starting with a "clean" copy of the avrisp sketch that accompanies the Arduino IDE, port it to straight C for use without Arduino. This also gives a copy of the Arduino sketch that will remain static.