kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@xxxxxxxxx>]

Simon,

There is some documentation on the Python scripting in the users
documentation[1].  There is also a developers Pcbnew Scripting
section[2] as well but is currently empty.  I'm guessing you are talking
about documentation for developers.  There are two ways to approach
this.  Fill in the Doxygen documentation so the KiCad Pcbnew Scripting
section contains the correct developers documentation or add a separate
markdown file to our developers documentation[3].  Both of these are
done within the source repo so they are not (nor have they ever been) on
someone's github repo.  I would be more than happy if someone submitted
a patch to document this.  My preference would be a separate markdown
file in the developers documentation.  Feel free to look at some of the
other markdown files in our source tree[4] for inspiration.

Cheers,

Wayne

[1]:
http://docs.kicad-pcb.org/stable/en/pcbnew.html#_kicad_scripting_reference
[2]:
http://docs.kicad-pcb.org/stable/en/pcbnew.html#_kicad_scripting_reference
[3]: http://docs.kicad-pcb.org/doxygen/index.html
[4]: https://git.launchpad.net/kicad/tree/Documentation/development

On 6/11/2017 5:19 PM, Simon Küppers wrote:
> Hey guys,
> There does not seem to be a lot of feedback. I guess I am rather early
> to the pcbnew Python Plugin Party ;-)
> 
> I have dug deeper into the code and found out, that the plugins are
> actually pulled into python using 'import'. I was under the impression
> that a python interpreter was instantiated each time a plugin was executed.
> 
> This changed everything completely, I have found a good way to organize
> the stuff (and I have done it here as an example:
> https://github.com/skuep/kicad-plugins/tree/master).
> 
> I am currently going with the following folder structure
> + ~/.kicad_plugins/
>     - action_plugin_a.py # some other plugin
>     - action_plugin_b.py # another one
>     + action_plugin_big/ # a big plugin in a folder
>         - plugin_big_action.py # containing the ActionPlugin class
>         - plugin_big.py # containing some more general stuff
>         - plugin_dialogs.py # containing generated dialogs
>         - __init__.py # containing the instantiation and register()
>         - __main__.py # optional. if available, plugin runs standalone
>         + resources/
>             - some_other_stuff.png
> 
> So everything looks good right now. It just has to be documented somewhere.
> 
> Is there a place where documentation about the python plugins is
> collected? Again, I hate when these informations are scattered in forums
> or other peoples githubs... Also this looks unprofessional ;-)
> 
> Best Regards!
> Simon
> 
> Am 09.06.2017 um 13:09 schrieb Simon Küppers:
>> Hey guys,
>> With my current work on python plugins for pcbnew, I noticed that you
>> quickly want to go ahead and divide up your plugin into multiple
>> subfiles (e.g. test_plugin.py, test_plugin_main_dialog.py, etc..)
>>
>> Right now, KiCad loads the python files from the hardcoded folders (one
>> of them being ~/.kicad_plugins however it does not do it recursively.
>> Thus it is not possible to organize the files in a subdirectory (e.g.
>> test_plugin/).
>>
>> Another thing that I noticed (but did not confirm yet) is, that action
>> plugins need actually have "action_" prepended to the .py file in order
>> for them to load properly so that they are shown in the pcbnew menu.
>> This is also on purpose right?
>>
>> I guess my proposal for a _consistent_ handling of python plugins in the
>> future might be either
>> 1) Make test_plugin/ subfolder and place all files into this
>> subdirectory. KiCad recursively loads all plugins in the hardcoded
>> directories
>>
>> 2) Make test_plugin/ subfolder and place all files into this
>> subdirectory. When the user wants to use a plugin, he needs to create a
>> relative link in the hardcoded directory to the corresponding entry-file
>> in the test_plugin/ sub-directory.
>>
>> I am currently leaning towards the 2nd solution. But in order for it to
>> be user friendly (also to those who arent computer savvy), each plugin
>> needs some kind of installer to perform the copying and linking. I guess
>> this solution is also more "linuxy" since I have seen this technique in
>> a lot of different applications (e.g. munin plugins).
>>
>> What are your thoughts on that?
>>
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