kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@...>]

Dick Hollenbeck wrote:

<<< snipped >>>

>> Since you have expressed that there should be a canonical text format for library data, the very first plugin I would like to see is one which can invoke an executable in a separate process and communicate with it via stdin/stdout. Then I can build my real plugin underneath the plugin manager in Python :)
>> 
> 
> Well that would give you a byte stream, but no defined way to marshall 
> arguments. Why not simply go through DBUS, it was invented precisely 
> for this problem space. But I'm not saying do the formal usage API 
> (definition) in DBUS, but rather keep that as a C++ point of departure.

Dick,

I took look at DBUS documentation over the past few days so I could at
least try to see where you were thinking about going code wise. DBUS is
definitely an interesting way to solve the IPC problem. The fact that
it seems to have well supported set of language bindings is definitely a
plus. The only caveat I see is it's support on Windows. I download the
MinGW archive of DBUS from sourceforge to see what the differences where
between the Windows version and the unix version and how difficult it
would be to support in on Windows. The archive appears to be corrupt so
I couldn't install it on my system which makes me wonder how well
supported DBUS is on Windows. There is mention of an eventual merge of
the windows version with the main code base. Do you know of any good
examples of a project that has used DBUS cross platform? I know Windows
is not your favorite platform ( I'm shooting for the understatement of
the year award ) but I don't think abandoning Windows support it is an
option for Kicad just yet. ;)

> The usage API could be done in a *.h file or two, and then Doxygen could 
> be ran against it to generate a nice programmer's document. Perhaps the 
> licensing model should allow closed source on the API, so somebody can 
> implement a closed source plugin. Then maybe TI or somebody will step 
> up and write a plugin so they can beat up on their competitors among 
> Kicad users, who eventually will take over the world.

Oh no! Not another world domination proclamation.

Wayne

> 
> 
> 
> Dick