kicad-developers team mailing list archive

["Patrick" <pmaupin@...>]

--- In kicad-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "phinitnan_c" <crackerizer@...> wrote:
>
> 1) Is there developers working on the new library file format specification? I may be able to help.

As Wayne replied, there are no real plans for this, because (except for theseparate .dcm files) nobody considers the current format to be broken. Itcould be better, but if you make it non-text, a lot of people will be unhappy. Now, focusing on the *use* of the library files (how many components to store per file, how are they organized, etc.), I think there are a lot of people who think the current kicad default library structure could be enhanced. Also, perhaps, some tools to easily be able to suck library components off a website straight into KiCad. Things like that.

> 2) Is there the document for the current file format? I tried to find it with no luck.

It is documented, better than most things are documented :)

> 3) Would it be possible to use an existing database engine (eg. sqlite) to store library/module information?

Sure. In fact, if you want to do that and know Python, my kipy.org (Pythontools for KiCad) already has readers/writers for .lib files. It can round-trip a library file (read it in and write it back out) without any problem. Should be a piece of cake to hook it up to a database.

I've been busy with other stuff, but I have plans to put some automatic part generation code I have written in there as well.

Pat