Re: [avrdude-dev] About avrdude-gui

[Brian Dean]

On Sat, Oct 29, 2005 at 11:22:50AM +0200, Joerg Wunsch wrote:

> Yes.  Btw., the fuse bit descriptions that are used in AVR Studio are
> available in the XML files, so it's only a matter of merging them into
> avrdude.conf.
> 
> Perhaps we should reconsider the current avrdude.conf structure anyway
> (maybe move to XML?), it became quite unhandily large already.

No objection here.  The grammar and corresponding parser I wrote could
probably mostly be replaced by an XML library.  We would still need to
consider the data structures carefully, of course, to make sure that
we can properly represent everything needed.

Of course, one of the reasons the current avrdude.conf file is large
is that all of our part information is in that one file.  We could
split it up into multiple files if needed, whether we go XML or not.

> So Brian, didn't you recently ask what would eventually justify
> issuing a version 6.0 of avrdude? :-)

Well, I think if we do this, then I think we will have achieved most
of the long term eventual objectives.  For a long time we have been
batting around the idea of using the Atmel XML files directly.  Moving
to at least an XML format would most likely make it easier to import
data from them at least, even if we can't use them directly.  Also, I
had long considered it to be a very good thing if we could support the
JTAG devices - and you've done that just this past summer.

And if we now pull in fuse bit information into the configuration
file(s) and integrate a GUI, I think I'd pretty much call avrdude
done, except for maintenance updates for new programmers and parts :-)

But I'm sure we'll think of something for lucky Version 7.

-Brian
-- 
Brian Dean
ATmega128 based MAVRIC controllers
http://www.bdmicro.com/