AVR-Chat

On Sat, 22 Mar 2008 11:03:14 -0700, you wrote:

> I recently moved from assembly programming to C for the AVR for
> a project, teaching myself mostly.  It has been torturous, for me
> especially because I'm originally a hardware guy.  Programming
> in assembly over the last 5 years has been straightforward, and
> an easy understanding of the pins and resources of each micro.
> However, the incredibly klugey nature and structure of the C
> compilers and makefile systems to me was and still is horrendous.

I'd have to agree, but this is entirely down to the compiler producers - it doesn't need to be that
hard. 
In most cases, any particular chip will have a set of default settings that will be useable for the
majority of people, at least until they get the hang of things, and a good toolchain will make it
easy to start off a simple project with minimal fiddling. 
 
An example of how  easy this can be is Hi-Tech's PIC C compiler - just do #include <pic.h> and you
can compile & run a project in MPLAB pretty much straight away with no fiddling about. 

IAR's Embedded workbench C for the AVR isn't too bad, as the default linker options are sensible and
easily changed, although th ewhole porject/workspace thing, and default directory structure can be a
bit tedious where all you want is  asimple single source and object file  
Their ARM toolset is another story - I still need to refer to my 'to-do' list every time I start a
new project... I doubt anyone with no example projects to look at could ever get this working with
the JTAG debugger from the docs alone..