Re: [avr-chat] AVR IDE [WAS: UISP / AVRDude : what to choose ?]

[David Kelly]

On Aug 30, 2005, at 12:11 AM, Joerg Wunsch wrote:

> "E. Weddington" <address@hidden> wrote:
>
>
> > I agree with David Kelly in the sense that *arbitrarily hiding
> > important project information behind a binary-based GUI* is a Bad
> > Thing. I've seen these issues too.
>
> Btw., lately it appears to become common to use XML files instead.  It
> has at least one advantage: if something goes wrong, you can have a
> look into it, and perhaps even fix that.

Thats why I was up late the other night, installing MacOS X Tiger and  
X-Code on my laptop. X-Code appears to be exactly the right way  
things should be done, expect no less of Apple. It appears to be a  
GUI which drives standard CLI tools such as gcc 3.3 and 4.0, both  
were on the base install disk. X-Code is not installed by default.

Every configuration preference thruout MacOS X that I've seen is  
stored in XML files. Right on down to every application preference,  
user accounts and network settings. A bit of a pain to learn to use  
netinfo rather than edit text files directly, but it is the right way  
to go.

Avr-gcc under X-Code would be something. Have heard several have it  
running.

Isn't it amazing? Go to your local computer store and purchase a  
Macintosh or MacOS X, and the GNU toolchain is included? Especially  
considering how anti-Apple the FSF has been in the past. Am still  
stunned my mother and father can send email using Unix.

Point some have missed in my reply: the <sarcasm> annotation.

As for "GUI saves time!", well I'm having the opposite experience. If  
I have an editor I know and works well then how does a GUI IDE add  
value when its hard to step out from the IDE to edit and resync when  
returning to the IDE? Some have an option to use an external editor  
but that rarely works cleanly and is only one more complication.

Have mentioned MPLAB and CodeWarrior as IDEs. One other bad memory is  
iSYSTEM.

Lacking a decent editor on Windows I picked up on PN2 from WinAVR. It  
works good, not great. The feature I miss the most is the ability to  
split a window, to look at one end of my file while editing on  
another end of my file.

PN2 will launch Make without having to leave the editor. Great. Thats  
where I spend most of my time, edit/compile and edit some more. Too  
many I know edit in the debugger. Rather than design their code to  
work they tune it until it "works" in the debugger. I hate that and I  
hate having to repair/maintain code which was created that way.

Launching AVR Studio to debug isn't much of a hassle. I launch it  
when I'm ready to verify my code works, not when I want to see what  
my code does. However there was an announcement on one AVR list  
recently of someone at Atmel having alpha or beta interface for avr- 
gcc in AVR Studio. That should appease some. I might even use it  
myself if the editor windows will split horizontally.

--
David Kelly N4HHE, address@hidden
========================================================================
Whom computers would destroy, they must first drive mad.