kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Maciej Suminski <maciej.suminski@xxxxxxx>]

Hi Wayne,

On 08/13/2017 05:10 PM, Wayne Stambaugh wrote:
> On 8/12/2017 4:15 PM, Maciej Suminski wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> TL;DR: I seek your input regarding support for long pin numbers and pad
>> names. Perhaps it might not be perceived as a frequently used feature,
>> but the four characters restriction for names is an obstacle for import
>> plugins.
> 
> I am fine with this change if it is required to allow the Eagle
> schematic plugin to work properly as much as I don't want to change the
> current schematic file format.  We will just have to bite the bullet to
> include what I consider an important feature given the current Eagle
> licensing issues.

Actually I am working on a different converter, but it is true there is
no pin number/pad name length restriction in Eagle.

[snip]
> I think we can live with the relatively small performance hit for better
> Eagle import support.  Are you sure the board file format need to be
> bumped?  There are no code changes to either the pcb parser or formatter
> that I could see.  I do not believe there is any risk of pad numbers
> from a board being pushed back to the schematic editor so I'm not sure a
> board file revision bump is required.  AFAIK there is no schematic file
> version check nor has there ever been that I am aware of unless we add
> one to the legacy schematic plugin so we may need to add it to actually
> check the file version.

Pcbnew stores pad names in an integer and char[4] union, so if one loads
a board with longer pad names, they will be truncated. It can easily
cause troubles, as truncated pad names may receive the same name, and as
the result they will be connected to the same net or even more likely -
they will not be connected at all due to pin number and pad name
mismatch. File format version increment is to assure that the user runs
a pcbnew version that can cope with longer names.

Regards,
Orson