geda-developers team mailing list archive

[DJ Delorie <dj@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> PCB and gEDA were separate projects on separate servers.

To be accurate, gEDA is the whole project, and pcb, gaf (gschem and
friends), gerbv, icarus, gnucap, gtkwave, and gedasymbols are separate
independent sub-projects included in gEDA.

> PCB integrates things a lot.

gaf and pcb both have an expansion feature - gaf uses gnetlist
backends and libraries, pcb uses actions and plugins.  While PCB's
expansion is done in a monolithic binary and gaf is done as a
multitude of separate binaries, "pcb" is still one thing (rarely split
up) and "gaf" is still one thing (rarely split up).

These are technical details and semantics that are not that important
as differentiators, but people tend to be very emotionally tied to
their particular favorites.  The arguments over these became more
important than solving actual problems.

The people who want to make progress by actually writing code and
solving problems get priority from me.  If these problems can be
solved in ways compatible with each sub-projects internal design, it's
up to those who know the internal designs to help guide development to
fit those designs, not to block development out of fear it won't fit.

So no, we should not separate the projects further.  They get used
together, it should be easy to use them together.  Integration at a
functional level is not incompatible with the design of each
sub-project, if the integration layer is implemented correctly.

> > That is why I've talked about integration vs. separation of gaf and pcb
> > projects before. I'd prefer more integration.
> 
> I prefer separation. I want more tools to fill the gaps inbetween and
> I was working on some plans for them which we should talk about in one
> or more other threads.

Adding more tools between in order to make using gEDA as a whole
easier can be considered a form of integration too :-)