kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Cirilo Bernardo <cirilo.bernardo@xxxxxxxxx>]

Thanks to nickoe I'm finally able to build on MSWin and was able to
get the dynamic plugins working on that platform. With some help on
the kicad IRC channel I was able to make changes and verify that
dynamic plugins work on OSX as well. (On MSWin I will need to do
some more work - the file selector visuals are unbelievably ugly at the
moment, but this really has nothing to do with dynamic plugins.)

Now that I know how to make dynamic plugins work I should be able
to (1) finish the implementation of 3D model loading via dynamic
plugins, and (2) create a dynamic plugin scheme for Export functions
so I can finally implement an IGES exporter. My intention with the
Export plugins is to make it possible to implement a dynamic Export
menu and to load exporter code as required; the implementation
will make it possible to add more export options without touching any
KiCad source files at all. In principle dynamic plugins can also be
implemented for Importers but I believe the Export plugin job will keep
me busy for a long time since an API must be developed to interact
with KiCad and this will not be a trivial task.

I'll finish work on (1) first of course so we can take advantage of Mario's
new renderer and have 3D previews of model files as we browse them.

- Cirilo