Re: [avr-gcc-list] Latest working versions (ATmega324p)?

[Bernard Fouché]

Weddington, Eric wrote:
> I'm currently working on a new WinAVR, with the offending patch removed, and I 
> hope that this will finally clear up the problems. After I release WinAVR, and 
> no one is screaming that it is causing bad code to be generated then I will 
> post the patches on the WinAVR CVS.
>
> Sorry for all the hassle.
>
>
>   
Don't feel sorry, without people like you, Joerg, Dmitry, Anatolv, Andy 
and all the others involved in the avr-gcc toolchain and related tools 
like avrdude, we would be in a difficult situation ;)

I think that the main problem is not about a particular release of a 
particular package/software, but providing a central information point 
where someone would find all relevant information about the toolchain. 
In 6 month the problem with WinAvr20080411 may happen again with a newer 
release, and we'll be back to the beginning of this discussion.

In the meantime people may have changed of tools because, IMHO, at first 
glance, being sure of having the latest avr-gcc toolchain is a difficult 
quest:

If one googles 'avr-gcc', the first link is to avrfreaks, and shows a 
2002 release of avr-gcc. Then there are a few links to french sites 
(maybe because I'm placing the query to Google from France?), and a link 
to http://winavr.sourceforge.net/ . The latest help information there is 
about the 20060125 release. At that point one still can't know the 
required list of patches and the FSF files to get. At last there is a 
link to http://www.nongnu.org/avr-libc/ and the information there is 
confusing as I reported. Searching directly for 'WinAvr' does not help 
much more.

If the goal is to get people to use avr-gcc quickly and efficiently, 
then there should be 'somewhere' the list of files and patches used to 
build each release of WinAvr (since obviously it is now the best known 
package for the toolchain), and have all avr toolchain related websites 
point to that 'somewhere'. IMHO http://winavr.sourceforge.net or 
http://www.nongnu.org/avr-libc are good candidates to be this 
'somewhere'. Having all sites pointing to that central point would also 
help the central site address to be in first position when googling. 
(The goal of being first in google ranking is not for advertisement ;) 
but to avoid the current information hunt about the toolchain)

I just sent an email to NutOs mailing list, because people there were 
having problems with WinAvr20080411 and were obviously unaware of the 
current situation. Now if I go to http://winavr.sourceforge.net , this 
release is not there anymore but at first glance there is no information 
why it has been removed or even that it existed and was removed because 
of technical problems. Again this is confusing for users.

At last if one runs Linux, MacOs or anything else or just want to be 
able to rebuild the toolchain from scratch for any reason (for instance 
because the toolchain source code is to be included in the depository of 
the application using the toolchain), then having this central point of 
information is much needed, as keeping track of what happened of what 
release of WinAvr and what are the known problems of a particular release.

 Bernard