kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Nick Østergaard <oe.nick@xxxxxxxxx>]

2017-03-05 21:48 GMT+01:00 John Beard <john.j.beard@xxxxxxxxx>:
> Hi Wayne,
>
> Thanks for taking a look!
>
> On Mon, Mar 6, 2017 at 3:24 AM, Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>
>> It is perfectly acceptable to have an empty global library table and
>> always use the project library table for defining footprint libraries so
>> this check would be annoying to users who prefer this.
>>
>
> The first dialog (Quit/Copy/Create Empty) is invoked only when the
> global table is missing, not empty.
>
> The second dialog (Cancel/Manual/Manager) is a more explicit version
> of the dialog that already occurs, e.g. on a keyword search, but I
> agree it would be annoying to have this on startup.
>
> Should there still be a nag prompt on things like keyword search if
> all libraries come up empty in total (i.e. empty global and project
> libs)?
>
>> Rather than go through all of this, why not just use a single wizard to
>> step the user all of the way through the configuration.  The first page
>> of the wizard should have a list of valid footprint table configuration
>> choices followed by appropriate wizard pages.  I can see five plausible
>> global fp-lib-table config options.
>>
>> * Copy the default global footprint library table. (disabled if the
>> default global footprint table cannot be found)
>>
>> * Copy a custom global footprint library table.
>>
>> * I know what I'm doing and will configure my own footprint library table.
>>
>> * Use the footprint library table wizard to help me create a custom
>> global footprint library table.
>>
>> * I prefer to use project specific library tables, create an empty
>> global footprint library table.
>
> That does make more sense, I will take a look at roughing something up
> like that. Logically it shouldn't be too hard, but getting UI right
> might take a little while, especially if taking care of all entry
> points (so far, pcbnew, cvpcb and eeschema component chooser) is not
> plain sailing!
>
> The third option still involves quitting and dealing with it
> externally, right? Otherwise Pcbnew will have to be ready for having
> no global table, not just an empty one.
>
> If the user cancels any of these processes (if they can), do you
> envision it dumping them back at the wizard entry point?
>
> Perhaps also add "download latest table from Github", since that can
> change a lot over the lifetime of a release? Otherwise, all the
> "default" tables bundled with a release will become stale as Github
> repos change, unless the release packages get updates for that.
>

One thing I just noticed with stable 4.0.6 is that it can be hard to
add all the local libs with the wizard, because if you select dirs
with no kicad_mod files the next button becomes grey. It makes it
harder to add multiple libs because you can not just select all the
pretty dirs, because some empty and packages3d appeared in the file
list.

As you mentioned, I think the choice of using local libs or fetch
directly from github should be an active user choice instead of just
defaulting to a fp-lib-table that points to github blindly.