kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Chris Morgan <chmorgan@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, Aug 6, 2013 at 9:50 PM, Dick Hollenbeck <dick@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On 08/06/2013 06:40 PM, Chris Morgan wrote:
>> Hello.
>>
>> Sites like http://www.kicadlib.org/ are great for sharing libraries
>> but I was thinking that having integrated online library sharing could
>> better distribute the work while making it easier to share and use
>> parts. A user could add add trusted sources to their remote libraries,
>> contribute new parts, vote on parts etc.
>>
>> Thoughts? It would probably take a bit of effort to spec out and
>> implement things, I was thinking of an indiegogo or kickstarter
>> approach to fund the work.
>>
>> Chris
>
>
> This has been discussed numerous times, both for eeschema and for pcbnew.
>
> In fact I mentioned it for pcbnew about 4 days ago again.
>
> The eeschema conversation is longer, and archives have it already.
>

I've done a couple of searches like "kicad online library" and "kicad
network library" that didn't turn up anything. Were different terms
used in the discussion?


> I don't see why a PCBNEW plugin could not use http protocol to implement the PLUGIN
> interface.  The PLUGIN interface seems adequate, although we'll see soon how well it fits
> the needs of pcbnew after the fp lib table work is done.  There is no search mechanism in
> the API, but pcbnew can search footprints after retrieving them using the API.  That may
> be adequate, performance wise.  The PLUGIN API, which is an interface, does not prevent
> caching being used in the implementation.
>

Would eeschema require changes to implement a plugin interface as
well? I'll have to look at the pcbnew plugin api to see.


> Then there is a server.  For read only access, I think a stock http server could probably
> work.  Especially if the footprints were stored in the pretty format so they were all in
> separate files.
>

I would think that support for things like pushing new versions of
symbols and footprints, tracking old versions, meta-data such as who
created the models, support for 3D models, voting, comments etc would
be some of the bigger wins with a networked approach. The idea would
be to build a system that can be in some way self-maintained by the
users without requiring someone to manually track all of those
details.


> wxWidgets has an http client, and although its reputation is not shiny, it might be
> adequate for something so simple as retrieving short files, and grabbing directory listings.
>
> I said before I could write it 3 weeks.
>
> Dick
>

It might be relatively quick to implement. I'm starting to put
together a description of the concept, components and features so we
have something to discuss around. I'll pull in the information from
the previous discussions if I can find them.

Chris