kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Ruth Ivimey-Cook <ruth@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Oliver, thanks for your efforts on this.

I have been thinking for a while that the current way libraries are 
located and downloaded could benefit from improvement:

- At present the symbol, footprint and 3d libs are/can be installed 
site-wide (e.g. Mac /Library/Application Support/kicad/ folder), and I 
believe for novice and intermediate users it is not obvious that this is 
the case or how to change it. I know the 'Configure paths dialog and the 
various library update actions exist, but I don't think it is a very 
good solution.

- It can be hard to find appropriate parts, especially if you want to 
include more than the official repo in your scope.

Would it be useful to have a library manager tool that could not only 
edit entries but also set up per-project library folders and manage 
which versions of which remote libraries are downloaded -- a bit like 
'apt' and 'synaptic' do for linux packages, but with more control over 
where the packages were installed (e.g. per project, per user login, on 
a network share) and which versions were used, as for python's 'virtualenv'.

It might even be useful for the tool to be able to list which components 
came from which library and check whether the cached copy matches it.

Is this a direction the community would benefit from? If it were taken 
would it impact on the website work you are looking at?

Regards,

Ruth


On 14/09/2017 13:01, Oliver Walters wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> The conversation of how best to manage and distribute KiCad libraries 
> has been raging for a while now.
>
> Users looking to download or contribute to the libraries are currently 
> presented with a github landing page and some bland wiki pages (e.g. 
> for the KLC information).
>
> I have been working on a new-and-improved website system for the 
> following:
>
> * Clear information about the libraries
> * A place to download the latest libraries
> * Information on what is *in* the libraries
> * Instructions on how to contribute to the libs
> * Better presentation of the KLC
>
> This website will need to be updated periodically to present the 
> latest version of the libraries to the users. Also, if users are going 
> to be downloading library files then it could potentially use a lot of 
> bandwidth. Thirdly, the generated content should be scripted but 
> statically hosted.
>
> The solution? GitHub pages! - https://pages.github.com/ -
>
> These are hosted from your github repository, and for e.g. ours would 
> have the URL kicad.github.io <http://kicad.github.io> - this could be 
> easily redirected from kicad-lib.org/library 
> <http://kicad-lib.org/library> (for example).
>
> GitHub pages use the jekyll toolset to generate static content.
>
> With a small amount of additional Python scripting I have created a 
> bare-bones example of what this might look like (locally hosted on my 
> laptop for now):
>
> Here are some screenshots! Ignore the colors and simple layout scheme, 
> this is currently just a framework.
>
> https://imgur.com/a/0GELG
>
> The main objectives of this project are:
>
> a) Present a more professional landing page for the libraries
> b) Leverage GitHub Pages functionality
> c) Improve KLC
>
> And, eventually:
>
> Provide a standardised way to separate the KiCad libraries from the 
> KiCad installer!
>
> Thoughts and comments appreciated!
>
> Cheers,
>
> Oliver
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers
> Post to     : kicad-developers@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers
> More help   : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp