The GoodFET is a nifty little tool for quickly exposing embedded system buses to userland Python code.
For Mac, install XCode, MacPorts, and the FTDI Virtual COM Driver.
For Windows, install Python 2.7 as 32-bit, FTDI VCP Drivers, and add Python your %PATH% in order to run the scripts in \client.
In Linux, the FTDI drivers are included by default. Be sure that the user has permissions for /dev/ttyUSB0, which will likely require adding that user to the dialout group.
You will need python-serial, wget, gcc-msp430, and curl. These might have different names, and the MSP430 compiler might be separated from its libc implementation.
First, grab a copy of the client code and link it into /usr/local/bin.
git clone https://github.com/travisgoodspeed/goodfet/
(cd client && sudo make link)
Before using the client, you will need to specify your hardware revision in the $client or %client% environment variable.
If your GoodFET has not yet been flashed, or if you would like to develop new firmware features, you will need to compile from scratch.
cd ~/goodfet/firmware
board=goodfet41 make clean all