kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[jp charras <jp.charras@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Le 07/04/2016 15:47, Chris Pavlina a écrit :
> Hi all,
> 
> I'm targeting this email primarily at Wayne as versioning and release policy is
> involved.
> 
> We've got a bit of a problem right now. We're currently adding features to the
> pcbnew format - JP just merged rounded-rect pads and has a patch in development
> for custom pads, and I'm looking at a patch to add angled fields. Problem is:
> 
> 1. We're not bumping the file format version, so even though we're writing
> files that contain features (actual COPPER features!) that old versions won't
> understand, we're not marking them as such, so they'll either give nasty
> file-corrupted errors, or fail to load silently.
> 
> 2. Even if we did, pcbnew currently ignores the format version.
> 
> 
> I propose the following:
> 
> 1. Patch pcbnew to check the format version and give a friendly "your KiCad may
> be out of date"-style warning if it's too high a number.
> 
> 2. Accelerate this patch to a minor stable release to get it out there before
> these new features make it into the next major release.
> 
> 3. Adopt a policy of properly bumping the version number any time a feature is
> added.
> 
> Thoughts?
> 
> -- Chris

Good idea.

However, the rounded rect pad feature, as long it is used, (like any change in footprints) modify
not only the board files, but the footprint files.
Some other planned features will change footprint files (like custom shaped pads, stacked pads and
keepout zones)

Therefore a version id should be also added to footprint files.
However, because there is currently no version id in footprint files, any footprint file including
this version id will be not read by stable version 4.0.2.

A new minor stable release should also accept a version id in footprint files.

(Note: AFAIK, for angled fields, the files do not change: the angle is already coded in files)


-- 
Jean-Pierre CHARRAS