Hi,

Thanks for the question. WE are working on trying to provide a convert option that will allow you to achieve this. Any other ideas are still very welcome it's certainly a topic of interest.

You might have seen the extended tools>visual micro>programmers menu in atmel studio. It's a first step towards allowing a simpler transition from arduino to native atmel studio and being able to use the native atmel studio tools.

One question is what to do with the .ino files. I think users will have to split them out to cpp or combined them into 1 big .cpp (which is what the arduino compiler does at the moment)

Another question is how to link the library sources to the atmel project. Either by copying the sources locally or adding short cuts to the real sources. AS6 supports file short cuts but not folder short cuts (virtual folders) in the solution tree. So the current consideration is what options/user choices need to be implemented for the conversation.

To get an idea of what sources we are talking about build your project then click file>open object file for debugging". Opening the .elf will auto create a new as6 project with ALL sources.

When we have this working nicely it should then be fairly easy to write a mapping system that translates arduino build properties to as6 project properties. Finally we would have a project with .ino files, Visual Micro will go to sleep and F5 might just build using atmel studio.

But nothing is ever that simple  . I have said nothing that you can not try to replicate yourself (time permitting), if you do I would be keen to hear the stumbling blocks. I hope to find some time to experiment in a couple of months.