Re: [avrdude-dev] About avrdude-gui

[Bob Paddock]

On Friday 28 October 2005 11:45 pm, Neil Davey wrote:
> I agree that avrdude could do with a gui, especially for new users to
> arv using open source tools or someone who doesn't want to mess with the
> command line, or is just to lazy mess with command lines.. I know I
> found it a little difficult at first to find info especially about how
> to set fuses with avrdude...

I wrote this previously on the list, here it is as a refresher:

--------
AVRDUDE is great for the development environment as it stands now, being  
command line based you can run it from Makefiles and Script/Batch files.

But something I would like to see is true integration of the GUI into  
AVRDUDE.  The reason for this is to make the GUI version more useful in a 
production  environment, as it stands now the GUI is intended for people that 
know what Flash,  Fuses, etc are, and the handling of errors returned from 
AVRDUDE to the GUI is a bit weak  (this is the main
problem with the GUI/AVRDUDE integration as it stands now).

In production usage you want a GUI as simple as possible.  A menu to  
select your product, which loads the correct Flash and EEPROM files, a button 
that says "start  programming" and a big Red/Green widget that says if the 
programming succeed or failed.

If you really want to get fancy the ability to read Pony Prog scripts via  
AVRDUDE would be an useful addition, as Pony Prog has been abandoned by its 
author  and is not supporting new devices. 
 http://www.lancos.com/prog.html  I can send you a  
.ZIP file of the script commands, off the list, if you are interested.  There 
are many  people on the Pony Prog list looking for a alternative for doing 
AVRs now.
--------

Bernhard Walle wrote:

" Fltk looks ugly and isn't available on each Linux/*BSD system as shared
 library (the only program that uses it which comes in mind is htmldoc),
 so it adds dependencies.

 I would prefer Gtk (or the C++ binding). It should be available on
 _every_ Linux or *BSD system as shared library so size does not matter
 because it's a shared library."

The end result must also run on Windows.
 
Joerg Wunsch wrote:

"The current backend functions will serve as a
library."

When AVRDUDE is a set of library functions I can crank out a wxWidgets GUI
in fairly short order.  It is even something on my To Do list at work, so 
unlike most projects time is not an issue in getting it done.  The only 
reason I have not done it so far is I have not had time to learn the 
internals of AVRDUDE, if it is a library I don't have to.

In my view wxWidgets is still the best tool kit for the job because it will 
work on so many platforms including Windows.  In the interest of Full 
Disclosure I'm biased you'll find my name in the wxBook on how to program 
using wxWidgets.  http://www.wxwidgets.org/book/

Someone wrote:

"I even thought about a command-line option that *enables* the GUI,
though Joerg Lachmann thought about enabling the GUI if a GUI has been
configured, and no command-line arguments are given.  But I think that
option will lead to inconsistency in the behaviour between the
GUI-less and the GUI configuration option."

The way I have handled this in the past is no command lines get you the GUI,
so it does the Right Thing for the clueless using Windows.  You put a command 
on command line to prevent the GUI from coming up.  Those that know what they 
are doing will know to include "--no-gui" in their Makefiles.

Joerg Wunsch wrote:

"Yes, that's the idea.  Multi-platform support will probably be even
better than in the current (wxWidget-based) avrdude-gui as there,
Joerg used a GUI builder for prototyping that only runs on Win32, even
though the resulting code was multi-platform. "

I disagree with that.  I use DialogBlocks as the builder and it runs just fine 
on all platforms that support wxWidgets.  Also once the GUI is created it is 
not hard to make changes to it without having DialogBlocks.


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