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i2c-tools gets you pretty far if you have a userland i2c bus in linux

and spidev is not TOO hard to use if you don't need transactions.

Some FTDI chips can do I2C (also SPI), will i2c-tools work for it?

Otherwise the Arduinos with USB are a convenient way to connect I2C to a PC..

I've mostly used it with a beagleboneblack. Not sure if ftdi chips work. SPI seems hard to do with USB due to latency.