[En-Nut-Discussion] Removal of 8-bit AVR support (Re: STM32L051 and LPUART)

[Uwe Bonnes]

>>>>> "Jonathan" == Jonathan Woithe <jwoithe at atrad.com.au> writes:

    Jonathan> Hi Ulrich On Mon, Oct 24, 2016 at 02:17:53PM +0200, Ulrich
    Jonathan> Prinz wrote:
    >> We are designing out AVR completely and so it doesn't make sense to
    >> keep complex build systems and 8-bit downwards compatibility for the
    >> cost of complex code.
We in this context means "Ulrich and his work", but not Nut/OS.

    Jonathan> This is worth knowing since we will be continuing to rely on
    Jonathan> the 8-bit AVR capability for some time to come - it works well
    Jonathan> for our application and we can't justify redesigning our
    Jonathan> systems for an alternative microcontroller at this stage since
    Jonathan> it won't gain us anything practically.  I hadn't heard about
    Jonathan> this AVR removal plan until now (however, I often only skim
    Jonathan> the mailing list so I could easily have missed something
    Jonathan> earlier).  It means we'll end up sticking with the last NutOS
    Jonathan> release to include AVR support, whatever that turns out to be.
    Jonathan> At present we are on 5.1.0.

Again, there is no explicit plan for AVR removal. But it would be helpfull,
if users of the stable release would also try out SVN head from time to
time. So new bugs can be found, reported and eliminated.

...

    Jonathan> Is there any indication as to when 8-bit AVR will be removed
    Jonathan> from NutOS?  Presumedly the feature removal will be noted in
    Jonathan> the release notes at the time.

The only thing that can happen is that new driver targeted at nut/dev/ will
only be supported on STM32 as long as only STM32 has the infrastructure to
have a single designator for a pin, like PIN = PA00 versus Port =
NUTGPIO_PORTA and Pin = 0. This is a pita when it comes to decipher pin
multiplex values and write the nut/conf/.../*nut configuration files.  Such
infrastructure can also be done for AVR (beside AtMega103), but people needs
to contribute.

Bye
-- 
Uwe Bonnes                bon at elektron.ikp.physik.tu-darmstadt.de

Institut fuer Kernphysik  Schlossgartenstrasse 9  64289 Darmstadt
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