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

[Erik Walthinsen]

I'm working on the STK500V2 conversion, but there are a lot of random
values that the programmer is supposed to use, such as delays and loop
counts and such that simply aren't in avrdude.conf.  Adding them all
would be especially painful I think, given the way the conf file is parsed.

On the other hand, Atmel has provided exhaustive XML files with AVR
Studio 4 that cover (AFAICT) every device they make, including some that
aren't out yet.  These files now appear to be *the* master source of
information for all their tools.

So, the question is whether it's worth continuing to maintain
avrdude.conf as a format and dataset for part definitions, or switch to
using Atmel's official XML files.  I would definitely favor doing that,
as it makes the stk500v2 port reasonable, but obviously involves a fair
amount of work to do the conversion.

Dependencies shouldn't be a problem, as libxml2 is available on all
platforms without any dependencies, and if someone really wants to they
could port the thing over to Windows' native XML libraries.  Some
indirection would have to be designed in to handle that, but I suspect
it'd be easiest to design in the indirection anyway.

The main question is whether they actually have enough data to replace
the part definitions.  I'm going through the stuff now and am seeing
places where either their tools are assuming certain things, or I'm just
not finding the right data in the XML.

What are people's thoughts on this?  One way or another we have to make
several dozen new config values per chip available in order for STK500v2
mode to have a chance of working.

TIA,
   Omega