Re: [avrdude-dev] Re: [avr-chat] RFC: Unified Microcontroller Programming File

[Colin O'Flynn]

Hey,

So zip sounds good, especially because WindowsXP even has built-in ZIP 
support. So as long as the fact that the files are really .zip is advertised 
it keeps support for it even when the user doesn't want anything to do with 
UNIX.

I know nothing about XML - how hard would the parser be to implement?

Would we need real XML or could we fake it so to speak, just catching onto key 
phrases...

I forgot all about the extra files, but actually it would be good if we could 
have multiple files in the archive. Although I'm getting ahead of myself, It 
would be nice to even have this thing setup as a "system" programming file.

So for example if you've got an AVR and a FPGA, both files are stored in one 
spot. This eliminates the problem with such a system (or any system with more 
than one programmable device) where you go "oh crap... firmware 1.23 on the 
AVR only works with firmare 0.12, not with 0.15.. which version is this!?".

Also the other queston is how to do this - support built into avrdude, or a 
separate project that calls avrdude? No matter what I'd like to have some 
separate projects, but they could later be integrated into avrdude. The 
reason for the separate projects is so that other compiler writers can 
integrate support for this file format into their tools easily. Otherwise I 
think it will become a forgotten format, perhaps only used within avr-gcc.

Regards,

 -Colin