kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Lorenzo Marcantonio <l.marcantonio@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, May 11, 2012 at 07:44:06AM -0500, Dick Hollenbeck wrote:
> We are all entitled to our opinions.  I think the current design is broken, and the
> ambiguity of which "partname" is chosen, is a bigger problem than any you mention below:

The current design *has* problem; the 'cache' library file is one of the
symptoms... simply the fact that there can be two components with the
same chipname in two different loaded libraries and *no warning*
whatsoever is IMHO a broken thing (it should either a) ask you what
component should use or b) refuse load in a consistent way)

> > Fix it is certainly not trivial and cannot be fixed "just by adding a tag".
> > This needs a carefully designed (and complex) code.

My opinion: module versioning and maybe embedding the symbol in the sch
(like it's done for pcbnew, in fact). Version could be the timestamp of
the last module edit, in pcbnew that approach works well. The cache file
would then contain all the symbol version used (or otherwise the symbols
themselves could be stored in the .sch)

When needing an edit something like the 'update module' in pcbnew could
be used.

This approach would also permit local edits to a component... let's make
a simple example: the old school 555 timer has a lot of configurations
and depending on the circuit there are different pins layout (otherwise
you'll have a mess of labels or crossing wires). A local edit of that
instance could allow to 'personalize' *only* that instance. I think it
would be very useful.

-- 
Lorenzo Marcantonio
Logos Srl