I mean, which methods, sequences, structures etc. are repeated on '51 often enough that they would justify some sort of automation? The typical case is startup initialisation of peripherals, but are there any other of such?

I explain.

One of the reason why high level languages are used is, to automate repeated tasks, alleviate the user from repeatedly rewriting them, allowing to re-use them in a smart form (e.g. call a library routine with various parameters) and as a not negligible side effect, make the code more readable e.g. by writing a complex task as a single-line function call.

However, high level languages concentrate more on general stuff like structure etc., and maybe some of the basic math (+-*/ and similar), and leave the machine-dependent details to libraries - in the best case.

But, usefulness or usability of libraries is often limited by the constraints of the language itself. There might be not enough flexibility in defining a set of constants and calling a couple of functions - and, additionally, it is certainly not a modern approach, where things have to be self-explanatory and there is not enough time to study a machine-specific library and its usage.

I came across two "configuration" programs, aiming at helping '51 derivatives development - CodeArchitect by ESA for the NXP LPC9xx, and DAvE by Infineon for their XC8xx (among others). Both are clickey and are making attempt to be as user friendly as possible (although that's probably a very subjective matter), both are Windows restricted (as far as I can judge). Both are intended to run, click through a set of features, and at the end click to generate C-sources to be included into your code. And, naturally, both are limited to a certain group of derivatives.

I though about creating something similar in a more general form. I would like not only have a clickey interface, but also a means of textual entry of requirements (of course in some predefined structure, like the windowsey .ini, or XML or something similar). And, I would like to have an option to re-run the code generation as a part of a compilation process.

Of course I would start with the general '51, and proceed to the derivative-specific stuff later. I would like to have some open interface to the thing, so that anybody could contribute.

Comments, please.

Jan Waclawek