kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@xxxxxxxxx>]

Simon,

Using .mb_str() is valid.  Using static_cast is more c++ish.  Take a
look at the "Conversion to C string" section of the wxString documentation:


On 9/22/2016 10:42 AM, Simon Wells wrote:
> Hey wayne,
> 
> the commit broke my build...
> 
> in kicad2step.cpp
> 
> lines 61-81 have _( "BLAH BLAH") which errors out as not convertible
> from wxstring to char *. I have patched it with .mb_str() and was
> preparing a patch but i am not sure if this is the correct way, care
> to comment before i send a patch?
> 
> thanks
> 
> Simon
> 
> On Fri, Sep 23, 2016 at 2:18 AM, Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> On 9/21/2016 9:17 PM, Cirilo Bernardo wrote:
>>> On Thu, Sep 22, 2016 at 10:07 AM, Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>>> On 9/21/2016 7:27 PM, Cirilo Bernardo wrote:
>>>>> OK, I've updated the branch with the following changes:
>>>>>
>>>>> 1. removed wxT() from kicad2step and dialogs. The remaining wxT()
>>>>> instances are created by wxFormBuilder.
>>>>>
>>>>> 2. refined the Export STEP GUI for cases in which the exporter
>>>>> fails (returns an error or segfaults).
>>>>
>>>> Thanks for the fixes.  I got everything merged on my computer at work so
>>>> I'll just pick up where I left off tomorrow.
>>>>
>>>
>>> No problem; thanks for testing the branch.
>>
>> I tested this and everything looked fine.  I did notice in your last
>> commit that you used stderr.  I'm not sure that has any meaning on
>> windows but it didn't seem to break anything.  I committed you kicad
>> step export branch to the product repo.  Great job.  Thanks.
>>
>> I do have one comment.  The vrml exporter includes the silk screen and
>> traces which results in a much more detailed board model.  It would be
>> nice if step export had this as well.
>>
>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> It also just occurred to me that sometimes the OCE library may
>>>>> cause a hang. I can work on a generic dialog to launch an
>>>>> external app which connects to the apps stdout + stderr and
>>>>> which has a CANCEL button to kill the process - any comments?
>>>>> Should I put such a dialog into the "common" library?
>>>>
>>>> I'm wondering if you could make something abstract enough to work in all
>>>> the places where we run external apps.  These dialogs always seem pretty
>>>> task specific like the netlist and bom dialogs?  You could try I guess.
>>>>
>>>
>>> The best abstraction I can think of at the moment is to instantiate a dialog
>>> which simply has a window showing the stderr + stdout of the running app
>>> and a cancel button to kill the process if necessary. All other customizations
>>> should be done in a parent window. I'll come up with something and apply it
>>> to the BOM and netlist generation as well.
>>
>> Given that we've never had any issues with the bom and netlist external
>> processes, it may not be worth the effort although I'm not opposed to
>> the idea.
>>
>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> The fact that a process using OCE can hang brings up the
>>>>> question of whether it is better to leave kicad2step as a
>>>>> separate app or whether it is generally OK as a plugin and
>>>>> the odd crash due to bugs in OCE and/or the STEP/IGES
>>>>> models would be acceptable. We can stuff the plugin
>>>>> invocations into their own thread and check for completion,
>>>>> but unlike the case with a separate process, we cannot
>>>>> guarantee there is no memory corruption or leakage.
>>>>> Any thoughts?
>>>>
>>>> Ughh!  You're not making me feel any better about oce.  It would be nice
>>>> to be able to kill a rouge process though.  Doesn't the oce library api
>>>> provide some kind of error reporting capability?
>>>>
>>>
>>> OCE does have an error reporting scheme but I've seen it hang
>>> indefinitely while performing some operations such as shape healing
>>> on defective STEP models. In other instances it eventually stops
>>> after it has hogged the maximum memory that the system would
>>> give it. In both cases it's not possible to get error information from
>>> within OCE. Unfortunately such bad behavior is not unique to OCE; the
>>> MCAD world in particular seems to be full of buggy libraries, but to
>>> be fair the tasks involved are incredibly difficult and users no doubt
>>> are always coming up with cases that the developers hadn't checked for.
>>
>> Are we the only project that pushes these libraries that hard?  We do
>> seem to find our fair share of library issues.
>>
>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Somewhat off-topic: grep shows me that the source code
>>>>> and headers are full of wxT().  Since wxT() had been
>>>>> deprecated years ago and KiCad is no longer compatible
>>>>> with versions of wxWidgets which required wxT(), perhaps
>>>>> we should ask devs to purge wxT() from the headers and
>>>>> sources which they touch? I think that might also get devs
>>>>> into the habit of not using wxT() - even I still use it without
>>>>> realizing it - bad habits die hard. :)
>>>>
>>>> I caught myself using wxT() while writing the legacy schematic plugin
>>>> several times.  It will take time to get used to it but we will get
>>>> there.  If you happen to be working on a file, please feel free to
>>>> remove them.  I don't think we need to do the mass purge just yet.
>>>>
>>>
>>> OK; I might create some patches for the bits I'd worked on in the
>>> past like VRML export and IDF export.
>>
>> For small change sets (<= 5 commits), please send me patch sets using
>> format-patch or send-email.  It's easier than me having to add remotes
>> and go through the whole pull rebase cycle.
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Wayne
>>
>>>
>>> - Cirilo
>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> - Cirilo
>>>>>
>>>>> On Thu, Sep 22, 2016 at 3:04 AM, Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>>>>> Cirilo,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I just tested this since you fixed the windows extension issue.  The
>>>>>> menu item is enabled but I always get an "Unable to create step file
>>>>>> whenever there are spaces in the file name and/or path."  You didn't by
>>>>>> chance forget to double quote the command line string did you?  If you
>>>>>> don't, spaces in file and/or path names in command strings will fail.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Just a couple of quick comments nothing major.  wxT() macros are no
>>>>>> longer required in wx3 so try to remember not to use it anymore since
>>>>>> it's slated to be deprecated in the future.  It's also not necessary to
>>>>>> convert path separators in strings when you are already using
>>>>>> wxFileName.  You can use wxFileName::GetFullPath() which will return the
>>>>>> native separators no matter what you feed it with.  You can also convert
>>>>>> to the unix file separator for storage by using wxFileName::GetFullPath(
>>>>>> wxPATH_UNIX ).  This removes the need for #ifdef WINDOWS/#endif to do
>>>>>> the separator conversion.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Cheers,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Wayne
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On 9/19/2016 3:53 AM, Nick Østergaard wrote:
>>>>>>> Looks good, I will test it soon. But I noticed that it looks like you
>>>>>>> did not use the copyright template copyright.h from the root of the source.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Den 19/09/2016 09.46 skrev "Cirilo Bernardo" <cirilo.bernardo@xxxxxxxxx
>>>>>>> <mailto:cirilo.bernardo@xxxxxxxxx>>:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>     The kicad-step feature branch now implements a STEP Export. The menu
>>>>>>>     item may need a new icon (I lazily reused the IDF icon). Any testing and
>>>>>>>     comments would be appreciated. The kicad2step utility which performs
>>>>>>>     the conversion is of course dependent on OCE and is only built when
>>>>>>>     KICAD_USE_OCE is defined. The "Export STEP" menu item is disabled
>>>>>>>     if the kicad2step executable is not found in the same directory as the
>>>>>>>     pcbnew executable.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>     https://code.launchpad.net/~cirilo-bernardo/kicad/+git/kicad-oce/+ref/kicad-step
>>>>>>>     <https://code.launchpad.net/~cirilo-bernardo/kicad/+git/kicad-oce/+ref/kicad-step>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>     - Cirilo
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
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>>>>>>
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