westfw:
Making the menus more complete makes them harder to understand and use. (an age-old problem!)
I want an easy mechanism to remove the boards I don't have from the boards menu...
I do understand that! I have about 5 versions of the IDE on my computer and one advantage is having a smaller board list on a couple of the versions. I added the ATTiny series and my list got huge quickly!
In my statement earlier, I was hoping to have a way to create a board with a new chip type that is not currently in use. For instance, if I picked another Sam chip besides the one that is used on the Due, I would have to do a lot of homework to figure out how to set-up the needed files.
It would probably take a totally separate tool, to create boards by filling out a list but, that is what a person at my level would need to create the needed files for a new chip.
Just imagine, grab nearly any AVR chip, fill out the list with the specifications, hit a button for it to create the files, and BOOM you are ready to start programming.
I realize this may be a lot harder than I realize. =(