3.6.1.7 Dfp Option

The -mdfp=path option indicates that device-support for the target device (indicated by the -mcpu option) should be obtained from the contents of a Device Family Pack (DFP), where path is the path to the XC8 sub-directory of the DFP.

When this option has not been used, the xc8-cc driver will where possible provide the path of the relevant DFP that is installed with the compiler, in the dfp directory of the compiler distribution.

The Microchip development environments automatically uses this option to inform the compiler of which device-specific information to use. Use this option on the command line if additional DFPs have been obtained for the compiler.

A DFP might contain such items as device-specific header files, configuration bit data and libraries, letting you take advantage of features on new devices without you having to otherwise update the compiler. DFPs never contain executables or provide bug fixes or improvements to any existing tools or standard library functions.

The preprocessor will search for include files in the DFP/xc8/avr/include/ directory before search the standard search directories. For libraries, startup and specification files, the compiler will search DFP/xc8/avr/ and <DFP>/xc8/avr/lib/ (where DFP represents the path to the DFP) before the standard search paths.