kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Chris Pavlina <pavlina.chris@xxxxxxxxx>]

Good point about the footprint files. I'll prepare a patch within a couple days.

On Thu, Apr 07, 2016 at 04:35:05PM +0200, jp charras wrote:
> 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 be out of date"-style warning if it's too high a number.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
> 
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