kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Cirilo Bernardo <cirilo.bernardo@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, Oct 29, 2015 at 8:37 PM, Mário Luzeiro <mrluzeiro@xxxxx> wrote:

>
> >> - will it be possible to build the plugins without using kicad source
> code? Maybe for some type of plugins it will be easy to have an API, but
> for things related with kicad, it can be an huge library or dependencies.
> > The plugins can be built without the kicad source; all you need are the
> correct headers to implement the API.
>
> What I mean here is that for example, export plugins, they need to access
> kicad structures (eg: board) so they need an API for that or the libraries
> of kicad, so I believe some changes are need in the kicad to support /
> create / &reuse that libraries. So it can be used as a real .headers API
> with or without/outside kicad.
>
>
That is the plan. This is all possible (countles projects have done it
before) so it's not an issue.
Plugins only need to include the appropriate API header files; they will
not need to link to
KiCad or know the details of KiCad's internal data.


>
>
> >>- will some plugins be embedded in kicad sources by default? or will be
> packaged in the installers?
> > All the plugins which I plan to develop will be in the kicad source but
> there is nothing to
> prevent people from creating their own out-of-tree plugins.
>
> One of my concerns are if it will be possible to build the plugins without
> build kicad, even they are embedded in the sources and build of the
> package.. so it will be easier/faster to build just the plugin and test.
> (not sure how debug will work on an external plugin..)
>
>
This has not been settled yet but I would expect official plugins to be
part of the main branch.
Any out-of-tree plugins are not something for the kicad devs to worry about.


>
> >> - how kicad project will adopt / manage / integrate that plugins?
>
> > As for third-party plugins, the usual rules apply: since they are not in
> our tree and
> > we cannot control them (or necessarily even see the source) we cannot
> recommend
> > them. Users install such things at their own risk.
>
> My question was in another way, more related with the kicad as the project
> (not technical)
> If they create an external repository for plugins for example, it need to
> build outside kicad (then the install package can integrate this plugins)
> They probably have different revisions than kicad.. ?
> And so on..
>
>
That's possible, but it is not a problem for kicad maintainers and it is
too complex an issue
while having no benefit in thinking about it so I wouldn't waste time
thinking about it. For
example, it doesn't matter if the kicad revision is very different as long
as the API has not
changed in such a way to break behavior and there is no disruptive change
in any shared
libraries.  It makes no sense to attempt to manage all possibilities (not
even Debug vs
Release builds), so if a plugin is not part of the official kicad code, it
really is no problem
of ours.

- Cirilo


> Mario