On 04/03/2011 14:23, Gjermund Stensrud wrote:
Hi David
What you say sounds perfectly reasonable to me. We also use AVR
microcontrollers in a professional environment and have pretty much the
same setup as you describe where we try to use the newest IDE and have
several tool-chains installed that we switch between depending on
project. If we are to upgrade to AS5 it also needs to be able to work
with different tool-chains before we will consider to use it, and if it
can't work with WinAVR we will always need AS4 installed as well.
Switching between different tool-chains can be a little tricky in AS4,
the best would be if the IDE could provide a list of installed versions
and let you choose.
I have never liked AS as an editor or IDE, so I don't have that problem.
I sometimes use it as a debugger or simulator, but the precise version
doesn't matter then.
When it comes to Atmels website I also find it messy and inconvenient at
times. They really should have a log-in system where you register once
and only need to log in to download. I only bothered to fill in the form
once, since they put all the files in the same folder it is easy to
guess the path of the files. I think the old versions are still there
too, if you know the file name you can download them. Either way, since
the files are there it would be really nice if they kept a neat list of
previous versions to download. WinAVR does this nicely.
Agreed 100%.
Visual Studio is a very good editor, I like it and use it a lot on C#
based windows development. It is slow, heavy and have many unnecessary
CPU and memory eating background processes. But it's good and get's the
job done, with some patience. The really big downside is that it's built
on the .NET framework which runs very badly on other systems than
windows. And which will never be used in AVR development. So it's almost
like you buy a car just to use the ash-tray. Are there really no other
good editors Atmel can build on?
I have only a little experience with Visual Studio - for PC programming,
I've been a Borland man since Turbo Pascal, and these days I use Python
for the PC. My issue with VS is not so much whether it is good or bad,
or too big and heavy (Eclipse is not exactly lightweight), but that it
is different from what everyone else uses (almost all new IDEs are
Eclipse), it is not cross-platform (no matter what the mono fans may
claim), and like most MS software it can totally muck up your system.
It insists on a particular choice of OS and service pack (there is
nothing in XP SP3 that could possibly be relevant to AVR Development -
but MS likes to force everyone to have the latest service packs whether
they want them or not). It then proceeds to claw its way into the rest
of the system, installing its own version of dlls and other bits and
pieces throughout the OS. I have seen too many problems with MS
software messing up everything else to be happy installing it on my main
machine. I'll run windows because it is convenient to do so - lots of
the software I need is only available for windows. But I won't
willingly install other MS software.
The only time I used Visual Studio was a version of Code Composer Studio
from TI that was built on VS in the same way AS5 is. It ran okay, but
it had screwed up a lot of my system. Amongst other symptoms, trying to
run Task Manager would BSOD. I am okay with an application crashing or
failing - but not with it destroying the rest of my computer. Of
course, current versions of CCS are Eclipse-based.
mvh.,
David
- Gjermund
On Fri, Mar 4, 2011 at 1:42 PM, David Brown <da...@westcontrol.com
<mailto:da...@westcontrol.com>> wrote:
On 04/03/2011 05:23, Weddington, Eric wrote:
Hi Stu,
Hope you're doing well. :-)
WinAVR is the Windows packaging of the AVR-GCC stuff, along with
the avr-libc library.
Along with some other stuff, too. ;-)
(In addition, WinAVR is about to be deprecated in favor of a
toolset integrated into AVR Studio. It is on it's last official
release, at least officially.)
Officially, it's up to me what to do with WinAVR. Admittedly there
hasn't been a lot of incentive what with AS5 coming out with a
toolchain.
However, based on some discussion on AVR Freaks, I'm reconsidering.
(This is going to sound like an "I want" rant - which I suppose it
is. Ultimately, these are things I want Atmel to stand behind -
paying people or sponsoring contributors as appropriate. I pay
Atmel for the chips we buy, and it's even possible that I will have
a chance to help with these ideas (I keep hoping to have spare time
one day), but I think it would have to be Atmel that forms the base
here.)
I am a professional developer, and my company uses AVR's in many of
our products. What I need is consistent toolchains - primarily the
compiler and library. The toolchain is part of each project I work
with - if I run a project with WinAVR-20080512, then that will
typically be the toolchain I use for that project for ever after.
You don't change toolchains in a project without very good reason
- it's too big a risk, and involves too much re-qualification and
extra testing.
So I have a range of WinAVR compilers on my machine - typically
about one or two releases a year. They are archived and backed up
just like my source code. The makefiles for my project each refer
explicitly to a given version of the toolchain.
If I need to work on the same projects on a different machine, I can
therefore easily install exactly the same toolchain there, and
continue as before.
It is vital that I can take an old project, re-compile it with the
same toolchain and the same options, and generate a bit-perfect copy
of the old binary target file.
As I say, WinAVR has made this easy for me on Windows. The AvrTools
release from Atmel's web site also works fine for this.
But I worry about the heavy integration in AS5. I fully understand
Atmel is trying to make a system that is easy to use - but it is
important to remember how professionals work, or at least how they
/should/ work. It is conceivable that I can install different
versions of AS5 in different directories as they come out, and
archive them just as I do with the WinAVR toolchains. But that is
getting very inefficient. It would be much better to always use the
latest IDE and debugger, while choosing the toolchain on a project
basis. This means, at the very least, that the toolchain should
remain separate from the IDE.
Another issue is cross-platform development. It is certainly
possible to build avr-gcc and avr-libc on Linux and other platforms
- lots of people do so. But for professional work, the toolchain
should be identical. Again, I should be able to compile the same
source code and get a bit-perfect target code binary on either
Windows or Linux (or other platforms) - only then is the toolchain
cross-platform. This /can/ be done at the moment, but it is not an
easy job to ensure that you have all the right patches and source
versions. The patch sets provided with WinAVR (and
AvrTools3.0.0.240) are an excellent starting point - but it could
easily be made very much smoother. All that is needed is a set of
three downloads for each release - a Windows binary package, a Linux
binary package, and a source tarball with the build scripts for
Linux, Windows mingw, and maybe other systems.
This is not actually anything new for Atmel - they have had
something like this for the AVR32 for years. But what is missing is
a consistency and simplicity, and transparency. There is a lot of
stuff available from Atmel - but most of it is hidden by somewhat
random placements. If you want to get the latest build of avr-gcc
for Windows, you get it by following links for the AVR32 - not
exactly intuitive. And if you want to get a specific older version,
such as AvrTools3.0.0.240 - tough luck, Atmel apparently doesn't see
the need for archives of older software. And of course when you have
found what you want, you have to "register" to get the download.
But it is not "registering" - it is a inconvenient, obtrusive and
repetitive file-in-the-form-and-we'll-email-you-a-link system.
avr-gcc and avr-libc is an incredible tool. It is a professional
quality development tool - but it is currently suffering from less
than professional distribution from Atmel. I don't believe it would
take a lot of effort or investment from Atmel's side - just an
understanding of what developers need. I even think much of it is
already in place, simply hidden away. But unless Atmel do something
here, we will end up with fragmentation. Professionals need to have
a source of "official" versions of the toolchain - ready built for
the platform of their choice - and they need that source to be
easily found from obvious places such as Atmel's website.
As an aside, why on earth did Atmel base AS5 on Visual Studio? The
world and its dog uses Eclipse, as does Atmel for their AVR32
Studio. As more people move towards Eclipse and cross-platform
development, Atmel has taken a giant leap backwards here. And it
turns out that I can't install it anyway - my main machine runs XP
service pack 2, and the AS5 installation insists on service pack 3.
I look forward to more WinAVR releases.
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