kicad-developers team mailing list archive

["Richard A Burton" <richardaburton@...>]

> > Yes, please put them in a zip file, or some other such archive. There
> > is something horribly inefficient about lots small files when one
> > large one will do.
>
> Please define "inefficient" and what its costs are.

I'm talking entries in the file system and their costs, wasted disk
space from unused sectors, increased time penalties to recursive disk
operation, filesystem checks, etc. Of course the scale of the problem
depends on the number of files, how many are we talking? 10s is fine,
when we get into hundreds or even thousands of tiny files that just
smacks of inefficient design, and in this aspect at least a step
backward.

> We lose all the
> advantages of separation if we turn around and zip them back up. I am
> not in favor of this, at all. We'd be spinning our wheels!

Not really. They can be individual for development purposed and zipped
up at build time, so developers get the full advantage.

For users who want to modify a symbol: instead of copying a file to
their home dir from the kicad install dir they unzip a file to their
home dir from the installed kicad library archive. Essentially the
same thing.

There would be no reason to only allow only archives, so for the user
with only a small library of custom symbols (and possibly actively
edited) they don't need to keep them in an archive.

> Separate or combined? We are talking about SEPARATE!

Both are possible, combine the advantages. We are talking about
separating out the symbols into individual items, which can be easily
edited or transferred as individual items, collecting those individual
items into an archive doesn't preclude that (different to the current
non-separable system).

I believe this approach would produce the required advantages, what
are the disadvantages about a built time zip for the shipped
libraries?

Richard.