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

[E. Weddington]

Brian Dean wrote:

> I'm not fundamentally opposed to XML or anything but converting to XML
> isn't going to buy us any additional ease with regard to the internal
> coding.  
Agreed.

> The only reason I think it might be useful is so that we can
> use Atmel's part definition files directly, but it doesn't look like
> we are allowed to include them with the distribution.  And we can't
> rely on them being on the system already since avrdude supports 3
> other platforms where AVR Studio cannot be installed.  So the benefit
> ratio of converting to XML seems to be pretty low, at least at the
> moment.  At least that's my opinion.
>  
This is the only benefit that I see, is that we can bulk import the data 
from AVR Studio (Ok, one of us who has access to a Windows machine ;-), 
and then in theory avrdude would then support all the devices found in 
AVR Studio. When Atmel comes out with a new device (and new XML file in 
AVR Studio, which they seem to do that *before* a datasheet comes out), 
it would make it faster to support that device in avrdude. We wouldn't 
have to wait for some user to figure out how to add support and donate 
that back to the project.

> In general, I think XML is quite verbose and it will make maintaining
> the config file harder, at least until such time as we can use
> Atmel's.  Again, that's just my opinion.
>
>
>  

Agreed it is verbose. I'm not quite sure what about the verbosity makes 
it harder. I mean it'll be a bigger file, but heck it's just text.

I definitely understand that there is not a lot of benefit, but not zero 
benefit, from moving to XML. It's a very big job for just this benefit. 
That's why I had it low on a todo list.

Eric