kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

The new footprint library table code is pretty much ready for testing.
I need some brave volunteers to help out with the testing just in case I
missed something and I always do.  Build KiCad with the CMake flag
-DUSE_FP_LIB_TABLE=ON.  I committed the documentation for CvPcb so you
should be able to figure it out.  If you get stuck, let me know and I'll
try to answer any questions as soon as I can.  It's really not all that
difficult.  Please make a back up of your files before you start
replacing the footprint names with the new footprint ID format because
they will not work with the old footprint library look up method.

I'm most interested in how well the automatic conversion tool works in
CvPcb.  It worked very well with most of the KiCad demo projects with
the exception of a few libraries whose file names must have changed at
some point.  When you open a netlist with the current footprint names,
CvPcb will ask you if you want to automatically convert them to the new
footprint ID format.  If you decline to use the automatic conversion,
all of the footprint assignments will be cleared and you will have to
reassign them manually.  Also test back annotating the schematic so the
component footprint fields get populated with the new footprint ID and
then regenerate the netlist using the new s-expression format.  You
should be able to import the new netlist with exchange modules enable
and the footprints on your board should not change unless you modified
them after they were loaded into the board.

There is one caveat.  Something is broken with the KiCad Pretty
(s-expression footprint files) file parser.  It appears to be an issue
with the layer parser changes.  Hopefully I can get it fixed sometime
this week.  I just ran out of time today. Other than that the footprint
viewer and editor can seamlessly use KiCad Legacy (.mod), Eagle (XML
format), and Geda footprint libraries.

Once the KiCad Pretty library parser is fixed, the only other thing I
need to do is finish up the documentation for Pcbnew and Eeschema.  Many
thanks in advance for help testing.

Best Regards,

Wayne