Hi hauptmech,
In the meantime, there is an ongoing work to support custom shape pads,
which also demands a file format version bump (already done, right
before the long pad names patch to avoid too frequent version
increments). Such change calls for another set of if-elses to determine
whether we can reduce the file format version.
It takes some time to write, debug and *maintain* code to select the
most compatible file format version. As all of you know, time is a very
scarce resource in this project, which could be better spent on fixing
more serious problems or implementing new features. We planned to have
v5 released a few months ago.
On the other side, there are users who may need to cooperate on a
project. If you use nightlies, you implicitly agree to experience some
disturbances on the way, but we do as much as we can to reduce them
(i.e. quickly fix problems). In case of file format version update, all
you need to do is install a newer version. In most cases there is no
need to rebuild KiCad, because there are nightly builds for all major
platforms.
We are very happy to have so many nightly builds users, as you provide
significant help on the testing side. Thanks to you, many problems are
quickly spotted and resolved due to informative bug reports. Perhaps you
do not receive the well-deserved gratitude for taking the risk of
running experimental code, that is why now I loudly say: thank you,
guys! You are an important part of the team!
Regards,
Orson
On 09/21/2017 02:42 AM, hauptmech wrote:
File version issues have hit me a couple times when collaborating.
Solutions involve either installing bunch of binaries, stable first,
then nightlies, until we find a compatible one, or 'fixing' the file by
hand editing to a previous design.
It would be really nice to the user if you used the old file version for
designs that had no long names. (or whatever other incremental special
case feature change required the version bump)
I know writing code with different types of users in different
situations takes extra effort, but everything you guys do so that kicad
*just works* on the user side has a huge impact.
On 20/09/17 04:38, Maciej Sumiński wrote:
For your information: support for long pad and pin names has been just
merged. As the change affects both eeschema and pcbnew, and may result
in files that are not loaded correctly with older versions - the file
format versions had to be incremented.
Regards,
Orson
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