Hi David,
The plugin does not use any of the AVR in Atmel Studio, it uses the files includes with the Arduino Ide, No patch required.
AVR is the type of chip on an Arduino, or the Arduino Due has SAM instead. With the plugin you can ignore all of the normal Atmel Studio property pages and any discussion of "chip type". The plugin provides a list of Arduino boards, when you select a board the plugins ensures the correct Atmel Studio project settings.
The patch discussed on this site is an Atmel Studio patch that is referenced on the
Atmel Studio page. This patch is responsible for the ALT+ENTER project properties.
There is a youtube video on this
page that shows basic usage of the debugger (skip first 2 mins)
The Atmel patch is required to see the project properties, without which you will not be able to switch on debugging and will not be able to switch on break/pause.
The patch will not be required for future versions of Atmel Studio
I hope this makes sense,
Thanks
EDIT ps:
The plugin does not use the standard Atmel hardware debugging system because Arduino does not support debugging.
The debugger is a software debugger which means that behind the scenes USB Serial.print() code is injected during compilation to force breakpoint data to Atmel Studio.
The plugin simply uses Atmel Studio as a code editor and for intellisense + breakpoint config.
When an Arduino project is active, all other Atmel Studio features are overridden to work the same that the Arduino Ide works.
When the debugging is running the plugin is responsible for all settings and the entire UI.
This is why the Visual Micro project settings are important, they cater for a lot of things that Atmel Studio and Visual Studio do not.