kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Adam Wolf <adamwolf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi folks!

I have a question about adding another feature to the fp-lib-tables
manager, which is already pretty crowded and I want to get buy-in before
even attempting a patch.

Background:

Running into another issue with the KiCad Mac experience. Just to recap,
I'm trying for 2 DMGs.

One is called "KiCad Extras" and currently includes the modules from
github, and the fp-table-lib.for-pretty renamed just fp-table-lib.  The
idea is that users can download the extras DMG, and no longer need to be
online for Kicad.

The modules directory is fine, we provide a "drop target" (just a symlink)
of /Library/Application Support/kicad/.

However, the fp-table-lib is tricky.  The per-user "global" (across
projects" fp-table-lib is located in ~/Library/Preferences/kicad/ We cannot
make a "drop target" in a DMG that points to ~/.

Making a "package" works around this, but users don't like packages unless
they're part of App Store (because they usually don't realize they're
packages :)).  I don't want to do that.

Question:  Would a way to "load default fp-lib-tables" be useful to other
people in the library table manager?  This would take a look at what
fp-lib-tables.* are available in a location, and give users the ability to
replace their fp-lib-tables with known defaults--i.e. I want to use github,
I want to use eagle, I want to use on-disk pretties downloaded from
github...

The more I think about this, I think that it might not only help the Mac
install experience, but actually help the new user experience on all
platforms.

Thoughts?  (and greetings from Montreal, where I am on business and also
working on Kicad Mac nightlies while stuffed with curry poutine...)

Adam Wolf
Cofounder and Engineer
W&L