AVR-Chat

E. Weddington wrote:
> Russell Shaw wrote:
> 
>> E. Weddington wrote:
>>
>>> Russell Shaw wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi,
>>>> I've made avr-gdb control the atmel jtag ice directly.
>>>>
>>> Great!
>>>
>>> Is there any way that this might be added to the GDB project?
>>
>> yeah, after more testing. I can download files direct from
>> gdb into the target board too. You can also put gdb commands into
>> a file to automate gdb to program the target. I could make
>> another gdb target for handling specific programmers like
>> the one in avr910, making gdb into a scriptable programming app.
>>
>> You can also put a simulator in gdb and call that up as a target
>> too.
> 
> Hmm. Very interesting.
> 
> There was, at one point, some talk of perhaps combining avarice and 
> simulavr. This sounds like you could also throw avrdude in there too.
> 
> It would certainly be a lot of work.....

Adding new commands into gdb that you can use from the gdb shell and
call up a help page isn't hard. I've added commands to set and
show fuses and lock bits, and reset the device sanely. I'll add some
others such as to upload code out the device etc.

To add a simulator or another target is easiest just to look at the
others that are already in there to see how they fit in the gdb
framework, and didn't look very hard at all.

All programming devices such as stk500, avrisp, and freeware ones
could be controlled from gdb.

I've been thinking of making a gtk frontend for gdb with user
configurable buttons and things that are useful for embedded targets,
but i have to fit it in between paying work for next few weeks:(

> It would be a Good Thing to get a simulator into the GDB tree, one that 
> can handle running the GCC test suite. There's been a lot of work 
> recently in getting the GCC test suite working for the AVR (using 
> simulavr).
> 
> Interesting possibilities...

I've looked into simulavr before but was always put off by the
tediousness of connecting gdb to it with a unix socket. I'll
probably get it into gdb sometime too.