Re: [avr-gcc-list] Any SimulAVR or avrtest users out there?

[Georg-Johann Lay]

Weddington, Eric schrieb:
> Hi All,
>
> There's a lot of new work being done at the SimulAVR project: 
> <http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/simulavr>
>
> Specifically the "old" simulavr project hasn't had much maintenance 
> done on it in years. There is an "avrtest" project (hosted at WinAVR)
>  that is used exclusively as a simulator for the GCC Regression Test 
> Suite. The newer, C++ based simulavrxx is being worked on heavily, 
> with the intent that it will supersede both the old simulavr and 
> avrtest and include as much functionality from both as possible.
>
> We would like to turn the simulavrxx branch into a best-of-class AVR 
> simulator that will work for all of the use cases, on all platforms 
> that the AVR toolchain is used on, so we don't have various project 
> forks that don't work effectively for all. At some point we would 
> like for the old simulavr and avrtest to go away and to be able to 
> use the C++ based simulavr for everything.
>
> The question has to do with backwards-compatibility. How much 
> backwards-compatibility should we have to the old simulavr? How many 
> people out there are using the old simulavr? What features are 
> absolutely required? How hard would it be to change how you are using
>  the old simulavr?

IMO it is absolutely required that a simulator can run as gdb server for 
avr-gdb.

Stand alone simulators like avrova seem not to have this functionality. 
I just skimmed the avrora site and saw no note pointing in that 
direction, maybe I middes it.

Some Nice-To-Have features:

-- run in gdb server mode
-- code breakpoints
-- data breakpoints
-- breakpoint on SP to detect stack overrun/underrun (hard because SP is 
two SFRs)
-- query ticks since some milestone
-- logging/dumping (what instruction is being executed, what GPRs, 
SREG-Bit is changing, etc)
-- can simulate some internal peripheral that triggers IRQ, so that ISRs 
can be debugged and tests be written for ISRs

Georg-Johann