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authorzwelch <zwelch@b42882b7-edfa-0310-969c-e2dbd0fdcd60>2009-05-20 08:16:50 +0000
committerzwelch <zwelch@b42882b7-edfa-0310-969c-e2dbd0fdcd60>2009-05-20 08:16:50 +0000
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Move scripting overview from source tree to doxygen manual.
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+/** @page scripting OpenOCD Scripting Overview
+
+@section What scripting will not do
+
+The scripting support is intended for developers of OpenOCD.
+It is not the intention that normal OpenOCD users will
+use tcl scripting extensively, write lots of clever scripts,
+or contribute back to OpenOCD.
+
+Target scripts can contain new procedures that end users may
+tinker to their needs without really understanding tcl.
+
+Since end users are not expected to mess with the scripting
+language, the choice of language is not terribly important
+to those same end users.
+
+Jim Tcl was chosen as it was easy to integrate, works
+great in an embedded environment and Øyvind Harboe
+had experience with it.
+
+@section Uses of scripting
+
+Default implementation of procedures in tcl/procedures.tcl.
+
+- Polymorphic commands for target scripts.
+ - there will be added some commands in Tcl that the target
+ scripts can replace.
+ - produce <productionfile> <serialnumber>. Default implementation
+ is to ignore serial number and write a raw binary file
+ to beginning of first flash. Target script can dictate
+ file format and structure of serialnumber. Tcl allows
+ an argument to consist of e.g. a list so the structure of
+ the serial number is not limited to a single string.
+ - reset handling. Precise control of how srst, trst &
+ tms is handled.
+- replace some parts of the current command line handler.
+ This is only to simplify the implementation of OpenOCD
+ and will have no externally visible consequences.
+ Tcl has an advantage in that it's syntax is backwards
+ compatible with the current OpenOCD syntax.
+- external scripting. Low level tcl functions will be defined
+ that return machine readable output. These low level tcl
+ functions constitute the tcl api. flash_banks is such
+ a low level tcl proc. "flash banks" is an example of
+ a command that has human readable output. The human
+ readable output is expected to change inbetween versions
+ of OpenOCD. The output from flash_banks may not be
+ in the preferred form for the client. The client then
+ has two choices a) parse the output from flash_banks
+ or b) write a small piece of tcl to output the
+ flash_banks output to a more suitable form. The latter may
+ be simpler.
+
+
+@section External scripting
+
+The embedded Jim Tcl interpreter in OpenOCD is very limited
+compared to any full scale PC hosted scripting language.
+
+The goal is to keep the internal Jim Tcl interpreter as
+small as possible and allow any advanced scripting,
+especially scripting that interacts with the host,
+run on the host and talk to OpenOCD via the TCP/IP
+scripting connection.
+
+Another problem with Jim Tcl is that there is no debugger
+for it.
+
+With a bit of trickery it should be possible to run Jim
+Tcl scripts under a Tcl interpreter on a PC. The advantage
+would be that the Jim Tcl scripts could be debugged using
+a standard PC Tcl debugger.
+
+The rough idea is to write an unknown proc that sends
+unknown commands to OpenOCD.
+
+Basically a PC version of startup.tcl. Patches most
+gratefully accepted! :-)
+
+ */