kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Adam Wolf <adamwolf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Wayne,

I am taking this as temporary preapproval for a packages3d change.  I will
have a patch this week for your approval and hopefully by then the rest of
the OS X devs have discussed the Documents search path change, so we can
get nightlies out!

I think I may literally throw a party when I get OS X nightlies pushed.
Anyone else near Minneapolis MN? :)

Adam Wolf
Cofounder and Engineer
Wayne and Layne
On Jan 12, 2015 8:45 AM, "Wayne Stambaugh" <stambaughw@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> I agree with your logic but there may be some user issues if you change
> the packages3D install path.  Users who don't use the KISYS3DMOD
> environment variable may loose the link to their 3D models.  You'll have
> to look at the library path search code to see which paths are currently
> supported before you make any changes.  Otherwise, you could have some
> unhappy users.  Of course, you could modify the search path code to
> include any new paths before changing the install path of packages3d.
> This is a short term solution (think next stable release).  At some
> point we should create some type of library table (similar to
> fp-lib-table) support for 3D model libraries and schematic component
> libraries.  Then we can remove the library search path code and all of
> it's known issues from kicad (yeah!!!).
>
> On 1/12/2015 2:15 AM, Adam Wolf wrote:
> > I think this idea has merit.
> >
> > If we are discussing large changes to the OS X paths, can I ask for
> > another?  Let's move packages3d/ outside of modules/, so I can have
> > users who download kicad-extras drag and drop a modules directory full
> > of checked out github footprints into their ~/Documents/kicad/ (or
> > whatever...) directory, without having to include packages3d/ in both
> > the kicad and kicad-extras dmg.
> >
> > Adam Wolf
> > Cofounder and Engineer
> > W&L
> >
> > On Mon, Jan 12, 2015 at 12:56 AM, Collin Anderson
> > <metacollin@xxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:metacollin@xxxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
> >
> >     Hi, I wanted to give some thoughts on the paths KiCad uses under OS
> >     X, and some options to wrangle them all into something more unified
> >     and easier to deal with in a non-breaking way.
> >
> >     I'll get right to it:
> >
> >     1. KiCad should never store, nor require, anything in /Library.
> >     This is a root-owned, non-user writable directory, including
> >     /Library/Application Support, and is only used if absolutely
> >     necessary.  It requires sudo or administrator privileges to create
> >     and write to a kicad folder in /Library/Application Support.
> >      /Library/Application Support is strictly for files that are to
> >     remain invisible and are managed entirely automatically by a .app
> >     bundle, and need to be shared between users on the system, but for
> >     whatever reason cannot be stored in the .app bundle.  The Apple
> >     developer documentation makes it clear that /Library and ~/Llibrary
> >     must never contain files the user might need to interact with
> >     directly, and these directories are intentionally hidden and OS X
> >     actively discourages manual use of these directories, to the point
> >     that they are completely invisible even if the Finder is set to show
> >     invisible files.  KiCad should still look here, but the only reason
> >     to create anything in /Library/Application Support is if an
> >     administrator wants everyone to have certain custom assets, and
> >     manually install them here.  They cannot be modified after that, and
> >     should not be part of the normal KiCad install/usage mode. But files
> >     the user will ever interact with must not be kept in either /Library
> >     or ~/Library
> >
> >     Source:
> https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/General/Conceptual/MOSXAppProgrammingGuide/AppRuntime/AppRuntime.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40010543-CH2-SW9
> >     (requires a free apple developer account sadly)
> >
> >     2.  It's ok, and in fact, preferred, to store per-user copies of
> >     updatable assets like a lot of what is in the kicad-library folder.
> >     This correctly integrates with features like Time Machine, File
> >     Vault, and User Migration.  This may seem like a terrible waste of
> >     space, but wasting space is how OS X likes to do things.  A lot of
> >     design decisions have gone towards decoupling a lot of things that
> >     could be shared by making copies (like all the dylibs and frameworks
> >     in .app bundles, for example, making OS X apps balloon to...well,
> >     Doc Brown would say 1.21 jiggabytes).  Looking in my own
> >     ~/Library/Application Support folder, there are tons of things that
> >     could be shared but aren't.  That, and if anyone did want to make a
> >     change (which presumably is why they are stored in
> >     ~/Library/Application Support to begin with, since if the files
> >     don't need to be writeable, they are simply stored in the .app
> >     bundle), they do not need administrator privileges.  Sure, I know
> >     the rational is that the assets will automagically be updated using
> >     git, and that's great, and you want to avoid doing this over and
> >     over on a multiuser system.  BUT, what if something bad happens,
> >     someone screws up and makes a bad commit that breaks someones
> >     project? Or a crash our power outage dies and corrupts assets, but
> >     there is no administrator around to clean up or do a git --reset
> >     hard on /Library? If those assets are stored in the user's library
> >     instead, that user can simply use Time Machine to return to an
> >     earlier snapshot and in either scenario, they simply continue
> working.
> >
> >     Beyond that, maybe they just didn't want to update anything, and
> >     someone else does :).  It's silly, but people do strange things.
> >
> >     3. BUT, the ~/Library folder is, just like /Library, never to be
> >     used for files the user will need to manage or interact with. Only
> >     files created automatically and managed automatically by
> >     applications are meant to reside here.  Given that the user may wish
> >     to install or modify things in this folder, and at least for now has
> >     to manually install things to it and can't do this form within the
> >     KiCad app, there really should not be anything stored in ~/Library
> >     either.  If an app does not ask the user specifically, the perferred
> >     location for files a user may need to interact with is ~/Documents.
> >     This is why, for example, the Arduino IDE stores its libraries, and
> >     allows custom cores and all sorts of things to override its default
> >     settings (stored in the .app) by simply managing the
> >     ~/Documents/Arduino folder.  It's acceptalbe, familiar, and OS X
> >     user friendly to store customizable support files in their
> >     ~/Documents folder.  It's the folder for stuff the user can mess
> >     with, not just user-created stuff.
> >
> >     Anyway, I am not advocating the removal of any of the current search
> >     paths, but rather adding ~/Documents/KiCad (let's use proper case
> >     and make it look nice - KiCad vs kicad - while we're at it :)  ) and
> >     give this path the highest precedence - the user should be able to
> >     override whatever might be installed elsewhere with whatever they
> >     put in this folder.  It would also be a nice place to store
> >     documentation if it is auto updated in the future.
> >
> >     I have actually already made these changes in my, uh, personal
> >     version of KiCad, and would be happy to put them in a branch, but I
> >     didn't want to just shove all this in a merge request, since its a
> >     pretty big change to, well, policy on OS X.  I am a newcommer, and
> >     its totally possible I missed something and there are very good
> >     reasons for how things are done now, and beyond that, maybe no one
> >     else wants to do any of this, has a better idea, or doesn't like
> >     this one.  Which is fine.  These are just suggestions coming from a
> >     long time mac user, and if any of this is something the other devs
> >     would like to look into, I'll put up the branch (it also changes
> >     comments and documentation to reflect the path changes - I did it a
> >     while ago then realized how big of a change I was doing and sort of
> >     put it on the back burner).
> >
> >     If this is not something anyone is interested in, I completely
> >     understand and I will not mention or press for it again.  Please
> >     don't think I am trying to to tell anyone here what to do - I defer
> >     to the judgement of all the people who actually wrote those 500,000+
> >     lines of code, of course :).  Sorry about the length again.  I am
> >     very bad at being concise :(.
> >
> >     --
> >     "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent." - Isaac Asimov
> >
> >
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> >
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