Re: [avr-libc-dev] 1.8.1?

[Joerg Wunsch]

As Erik Walthinsen wrote:

> Right.  So, there seem to be two choices: let Atmel (you?) submit
> the generated headers, or have somebody who knows how to use the
> tools (you?) generate the headers from XML.

Exactly.

The xml/ subdirectory already contains some infrastructure that was
mainly created by Ted Roth to convert Atmel XML files to something
avr-libc could use.  However, this applied to the early AVR Studio 4.x
XML which had a poor structure, so a script was used to convert that
into some avr-libc specific XML dialect.  There were two ideas behind
that: 1) get rid of the ownership of the original Atmel XML files, so
we could store the result in our tree, and 2) being able to stuff our
own additions on top of it where needed.  As an additional point, the
result could be validated against a DTD (unlike the original Atmel AVR
Studio 4 XML files which looked quite chaotic).

These days, the Atmel-shipped Studio 6 XML files are quite sane XML.
In order to convert them into a header file, I guess all you need is
some XSL "style sheet", and an XSLT processor.

Obviously, if someone were about starting that task, it makes sense if
the result largely resembles what Atmel ships as part of their
toolchain, which in turn is basically the register definitions from
the datasheet.  But, if *we* decide to ship our own header files which
*we* transform from the XML ourselves, that's fine, and nobody could
prevent us from that.  As Eric mentioned, what we can't do is to just
import the Atmel-owned header files ourselves without their prior
consent.
-- 
cheers, J"org               .-.-.   --... ...--   -.. .  DL8DTL

http://www.sax.de/~joerg/                        NIC: JW11-RIPE
Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)