kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Garth Corral <gcorral@xxxxxxxxx>]

It seems like option #1 is the saner option.

If I’m understanding the change, once the variables are edited they become configuration variables.  Typical precedence for configuration is usually something like, command line -> environment -> local config files -> global config files, from highest precedence to lowest, which it seems is kicad’s current behavior.  So #1 preserves this at the expense of possible confusion if both are set.

To mitigate this confusion, perhaps setting a variable in the dialog that is already set in the environment can pop up an alert and suggest unsetting the environment variable.  If a variable is already set both ways when the dialog is invoked, it can provide some visual indication of this, with a way to get an explanation of what it means.


Garth

> On Mar 23, 2015, at 11:36 AM, Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> I'm getting close to finishing up the environment variable editing
> dialog and I'm struggling with the best option to set variables that
> have already been define outside the currently running process.  Here
> are the options that I see:
> 
> 1) Set all environment variables to the values defined in the dialog
> when the user dismisses the dialog by the OK button.  The is will most
> likely be the expected behavior by most users.  The only issue I see is
> that by design kicad ignores any environment variables that are already
> defined when it is launched so users may get confused by the fact that
> the value they set in the dialog is ignored the next time they launch
> kicad.  Granted, this not likely to happen since most new users will not
> externally set environment variables but it could if the accidentally
> use a variable name that is already in use.
> 
> 2) Only set environment variables that are not already externally
> defined.  This may be confusing if a user doesn't know that a given
> environment variable is already set externally.
> 
> Personally I'm leaning towards #1 since most users will not externally
> define environment variables and developers should know better since
> this behavior was designed specifically to make their life easier.  Any
> one have any thoughts on this before I finish up the code?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Wayne
> 
> 
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