What we provide support for with AS5 are devices that have been tested. This is of course done to be able to indicate any kind of confidence that it might work. This goes for all the tools.
Try to envision the sheer workload of testing all devices*all interfaces*all tools.
Then make a quick assessment of the time and manpower required to do so. Then envision fixing a bug, and retesting.
Get the picture?
Lots of repetitive work = not fit for humans. So yes we have automated this. But not for the STK500...
The STK500 is a nice and inexpensive kit, and a lot of you out there have one. Great, but we do not have enough time or manpower to trow at testing it completely or you wouldn't get studio5 for a long time yet.
Now I'm going to explain how I go about to add support for a device that used to be supported in Studio4 but is not officially supported in studio5. Need less to say perhaps but I'll say it anyway: I'm a trained possessional you should not attempt this at home. It could probably ruin your PC and STK500.
-First I open the folder: C:\Program Files (x86)\Atmel\AVR Studio 5.0\tools\STK500\xml
- I open one of the files. It's XML! How convenient;)
- I make the obvious device name substitutions. (yes it's case sensitive)
- I save the file with a new and equally obvious filename.
- I Restart AVR Studio 5
That's how I do it. You probably should not ;)