Re: [avrdude-dev] Atmel's XML part description files

[E. Weddington]

Erik Walthinsen wrote:

> In looking at the various things necessary to make binutils and gcc 
> also support various chips, I found at least one but with chips listed 
> as the wrong architecture (I think the atmega48/88/168 were listed as 
> siblings of the atmega8, which they are not afaict).  If we're going 
> to build an XML descriptor file (whether used directly by avrdude/etc 
> or parsed out into C), the number of fields necessary solely for 
> binutils/gcc seems rather tiny and therefore could easily be added to 
> this DTD.  This would allow someone to trivially write a script that 
> can generate the relevant sections of files for binutils/gcc from 
> *our* master files as needed.
>
> In addition, generating the io*.h files in avr-libc from the XMl 
> descriptions doesn't look to be that hard, and could even go further 
> and provide SFR bit unions a la CodeWarrior without any maintenance 
> pain. They'd just have to be generated once by a maintainer from the 
> official XML files and imported into CVS.
>
> Creating our own master dataset (any maybe merging with Atmel if they 
> wisen up about licensing) would make both adding and maintaining 
> support of existing and new chips across all the tools a lot easier I 
> think. Currently you have to tweak binutils, gcc, avr-libc, and 
> avrdude separately, some with their own internal naming schemes (Atmel 
> has perfectly good official names for their chips IMO), and hope that 
> you get it all just right...

While I appreciate the overall scope that this could apply, I would urge 
a bit of caution, and see if we can just get one thing done at a time.

For the moment, forget about doing the XML->"avr-libc header" 
conversion. There are two existing systems that I know of. Realize that 
nobody has ever defined the format for the headers either. There's quite 
a wide variety.

Adding this ability to avrdude would be a good first step. But, at the 
very moment, it's not a critical feature to have. IMO, avrdude needs to 
understand the stk500 version 2 protocol first. To get OT, avarice also 
needs to understand the JTAG ICE mk II protocol too.

Eric