Where are the hex files compiled by Arduino?

Question

Where does the Arduino IDE save the binaries on Mac OS X?

Answer 1

Arduino IDE uses the mktemp command to create the temp directory on Mac and Linux. However, on Mac the default $TMPDIR env var is not /tmp/ as it is on Linux. On Mac it's under /var/folders and it is randomly generated on boot. That complicates things a little, but here are tricks you can add to your toolkit (as aliases, functions, shell scripts, etc.) to help you find what you need.

To find the hex files

find $TMPDIR -name \*.hex -exec ls -lrt {} \; #<-- you need that backslash before and space after the semicolon

To find build directories

ls -ldrt $TMPDIR/build*

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NOTE: The ls flags of r and t cause the listing to be "reverse" sorted by "time" respectively. This means that the newest will be on the bottom.