kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Lorenzo Marcantonio <l.marcantonio@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, Sep 03, 2013 at 03:35:16AM -0700, Cirilo Bernardo wrote:
> That may be the case, but personally I would have preferred to treat that as being a different component with its own footprint, even if it ultimately refers to the same part number on the BoM.  So many copies doesn't make much sense to me - not even for a few hundred components.

That's a design decision which AFAIK was taken at the birth of pcbnew.
I don't think is a bad one because in practice it works fine (yes,
gencad output has repeated the same part forever, but never had
a problem with that).

The instantiated vs copied issue is old like IT, I think:P files can be
copied or linked... even in OOP there are class based systems and
prototype based systems. Both have their good and bad qualities.

Ideally kicad modules would be shared with copy on write (i.e.
automatically define a new footprint on modification). Like memory on
fork. To be implemented in our copious free time :D

-- 
Lorenzo Marcantonio
Logos Srl