Managing Device Family Packs (DFPs) in the MPLAB® X IDE for Different Projects
How do you manage Device Family Packs (DFPs) for different MPLAB® X IDE project types?
Normal MPLAB X IDE Projects
A base set of DFPs are installed with MPLAB X IDE (System DFPs) while updates are installed via the Pack Manager in the IDE (User DFPs).
DFP Persistence
When you uninstall MPLAB X IDE, you uninstall the System DFPs. However, the User DFPs will persist on your computer.
Archiving your Project's DFP
To rebuild your project, you will need to archive the DFP version used with your project.
DFP Repository
The DFP repository used by the Packs Manager in MPLAB X IDE is hosted on GitHub.
DFP File
DFP files are published with an ATPACK extension and can be re-installed through the Pack Manager as shown in the accompanying image.
For command-line usage, you can extract the contents of the DFP in a folder browser, by simply replacing the ATPACK extension with ZIP and extracting the archive on your computer. You can then use the -mdfp switch to specify a DFP to use for compilation:
-mdfp="C:/My Folder/SAME54_DFP/3.2.56"
MPLAB Harmony 3 Projects
The Harmony 3 framework maintains its own repository of DFPs on GitHub.
When you use the Harmony 3 Content Manager to download components to your PC, a copy of this repository is also downloaded.
When you build a Harmony 3 application using MPLAB Harmony 3 Configurator, all the required DFP files are copied into the Harmony 3 project folder. The MPLAB X IDE DFPs are not used.
Summary
- A Harmony 3 project is self-contained (no dependency on DFP).
- The project can be shared without the need to archive, share or install a DFP.