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

[E. Weddington]

Erik Walthinsen wrote:

> 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.  


We've had that idea before, and I'm all for it!

> 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.

You're right, it is a lot of work, and that's the only reason it hasn't 
been done yet.

> 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.


Do NOT do Window's native XML libs. The Windows version of avrdude is 
built with Cygwin, which has access to libxml2 and other Unix/Linux libs.

> 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 do you want to find? Others can look too, or if it's not there, we 
can certainly add it locally and see if Atmel will accept those changes.

The other issue has to do with licensing. We need to check with Atmel if 
it's ok to redistribute their XML files. I can check on that.

Eric