kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Nick Østergaard <oe.nick@xxxxxxxxx>]

I have not read the patch, but my apparent comments about this inline.

2016-04-09 17:42 GMT+02:00 Chris Pavlina <pavlina.chris@xxxxxxxxx>:
> Here's a patch that checks the PCB file format version against the currently
> supported one, and displays a message explaining the situation if the PCB file
> is too recent. I assumed YYYYMMDD format for the version. Message looks like
> this:
>
>     KiCad was unable to open this file, as it was created with a more recent
>     version than the one you are running. To open it, you'll need to upgrade
>     KiCad to a more recent version.
>
>     File: <filename>
>     Date of KiCad version required (or newer): <format version, reformatted as date in locale>
>

As the version line looks like:
(kicad_pcb (version 4) (host pcbnew "(2016-03-26 BZR 6651, Git
2efd31e)-product")

Maybe also print the kicad version that actually made the file? This
should make it easy for the user to figure out what to upgrade to.

> A couple changes still have to be made - this is only for comment, not to
> commit.
>
> 1. Also check footprints - we'll have to add versioning to those, as it's not
>     there at all right now as JP said.
> 2. Use a more friendly error dialog without the "IO_ERROR" and source code
>     location, at least in non-debug builds. That will frighten people. :)

What about just having a unfoldable details thing where you can still
see that if needed?

>
> On Thu, Apr 07, 2016 at 09:47:41AM -0400, Chris Pavlina wrote:
>> 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 be out of date"-style warning if it's too high a number.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
>
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