kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[LordBlick <lordblick@xxxxxxxxx>]

In response to a message written on 27.09.2015, 12:31, from Nick Østergaard:
> What is the plan for the python footprint wizrards [1]?
>
> I was trying to figure out how they were supposed to be installed, as
> it looks now, it seems that they are not installed by cmake [3]. I see
> that the eeschema bom pluings (the xsl files [2]) are intalled with
> cmake, but that [1] is not, although it seems like they sould be
> installed if we look at [3], but only if APPLE. And it seemt hat if
> not __MINGW32__ or __WXMAC__ then we use the completely hardcoded path
> on linux to /usr/local/kicad/bin/scripting/plugins ! [4].
>
> Although I can put them in ~/.kicad_plugins and they will work too.
> But I am not exactly sure where this is defined.
>
> So what is the desired way to fix this issue? As is now it makes it
> difficult to package the footprint wizards, because it is not
> instlaled with cmake nor is there a dynamic path defined on linux.
>
> Regards
> Nick Østergaard
>
> [1] https://github.com/KiCad/kicad-source-mirror/tree/master/pcbnew/scripting/plugins
> [2] https://github.com/KiCad/kicad-source-mirror/tree/master/eeschema/plugins
> [3] https://github.com/KiCad/kicad-source-mirror/blob/edbcf2d0cb5b6cd41f2c8f5da02eea83a87e23f5/pcbnew/CMakeLists.txt#L662
> [4] https://github.com/KiCad/kicad-source-mirror/blob/edbcf2d0cb5b6cd41f2c8f5da02eea83a87e23f5/pcbnew/pcbnew.cpp#L244- It will be nice to move all them to separate repo. It gives advantage that
people with python know-how can feel fulfilled without changing in main source tree.
- In fact this not so wizardry software, but parametric generators, so repo name
can be in example „kicad-python-plugins-footprint-generators”. Is probably
possible to add other plugin interface - to edit board (with some dialogs and
Undo/Redo access), so this name convention may be also for future use.
- Paths… „~/.kicad_plugins” in Linux is extremely ugly for me, I don't like mess
in user directory with bunch of dot subdirectories. Modern trends allocate
special subdirectory „~/.local”, and „~/.config” (kicad already in) so with
consequence it should be „~/.local/share/kicad/scripting/footprint_generators”
and „/usr/share/kicad/scripting/py” for helpers as
HelpfulFootprintWizardPlugin.py (too long name, better will be FPGenCore.py from
„FootPrint Generator Core”), FootprintWizardDrawingAids.py (also too long - my
propose is FPGenDrawings.py). Hard-coded in source paths always are bad. CMake
is more flexible for packagers.

--
Best Regards,
LordBlick