Re: [avrdude-dev] Special-section erase?

[Erik Walthinsen]

On 02/25/2011 10:22 AM, Joerg Wunsch wrote:
> I'm hesitant to add more command-line option letters, otherwise we
> might end up with a BUGS section in the manpage like in indent(1):
Agreed ;-)  If upper and lower case aren't enough mnemonics for the 
stuff at hand, it's too much <g>

> One possibility would be to extend the -U ("update") option: rather
> than only allowing for read ("r") and write ("w") operations, it could
> also allow for erase ("e") operations for the memory region specified:
>
> avrdude ... -U application:e:-:n
>
> The third (file) argument is not needed there (I just indicated this
> by a file format flag "n", for "nil"), so it could also be abused to
> indicate a page to erase:
>
> avrdude ... -U application:e:0x100:m
>
> Opinions?

That could work, though it's probably getting into code spaces I haven't 
looked at in the slightest (and honestly probably don't have time for 
any time soon... product deadlines).

Of course, there's not a clear mapping between the cmdline arguments and 
the CLI even now, and that might make it even more complex. ;-(

I think my current solution was to hack either avrdude or more likely 
the stk500v2 stack I wrote for my very custom (maybe destined for sale?) 
programmer [1][2] that just issues a usersig erase any time it sees an 
incoming page write.  Since usersig is only one page, this works OK.

[1] <http://blog.omegacs.net/2011/01/20/octopdi5-board-underway/>
[2] 
<http://blog.omegacs.net/2010/07/25/reduced-pin-count-programdebug-connector-for-xmega/>