Anyway, the change relates to 3 issues, the 3rd one I haven't confirmed if it fixes it yet or not.
1) BFL doesn't display an ERR (only a DEBUG message) if it fails to open a device (so you don't know unless you have debug on)
...
My change included modifying the initial detection so that both the Icarus and BFL code report the same.
i.e. attempt as DEBUG then failure as ERR
(P.S. there isn't much point posting that long code here)