kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 11/22/2017 10:42 PM, hauptmech wrote:
> On 23/11/17 10:51, Wayne Stambaugh wrote:
>> On 11/22/2017 4:46 PM, hauptmech wrote:
>>> On 23/11/17 07:03, Julius Schmidt wrote:
>>>> On Wed, 22 Nov 2017, Andy Peters wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> This “touching” of projects occurs with more applications than I can
>>>>> count. For example: every time I want to view a completed Altium
>>>>> project and I change layer visibility, Altium marks the layout as
>>>>> modified. It asks me if I want to save the file before closing the
>>>>> application.
>>>>> The solution I’ve found is: let the tool do whatever it wants to do,
>>>>> then simply don’t save the files after you’re doing viewing them. At
>>>>> the very least, make a copy of the project before viewing. My
>>>>> projects are in a Subversion repository, so it’s a simple matter of
>>>>> checking out a new working copy, and then deleting the working copy
>>>>> when I’m done.
>>>> The difference is that, presumably, Altium does not modify the files
>>>> on disk if you do not save.
>>>>
>>>> This is really my core complaint, I don't expect kicad to be able to
>>>> modify old projects and save back into the old format.
>>>>
>>>> I do expect it to be able to open them without damaging the files.
>>> I strongly agree with julius here.
>>>
>>> Not everyone wants to (or has admin ability to) migrate their workflow
>>> to the newest version of any software. Those of us that collaborate with
>>> these people maintain multiple versions of software X to handle this.
>>> Opening the wrong project with the wrong software version is a common
>>> accident in these situations.
>>>
>>> Long story short, an intentional migration of files from one version to
>>> another is fine but changing files to a different format/version on load
>>> in the background is not cool.
>> It does change anything if you don't remap so I fail to see the issue.
>> However, if you add any symbols from the symbol library table (which is
>> your only option now), then you will introduced the new symbol linking
>> method along with the old broken list lookup method.  You can still view
>> your old schematics without changing them.  Editing them brings the new
>> symbol library table into play.
> Just ran a test of this. You are right, no issue. I misunderstood under
> what conditions things where being saved. A thought though:
> 
> 'Rescue' implies an exceptional condition. 'Migrate' or 'Update' could
> be less scary and more understandable.
> 

Rescuing means you should be scared and that the only place the correct
symbol exists is in the cache and needs to be rescued to a legitimate
library.  We have leaned on this poor design for far too long.  The
cache was designed as a fallback in case symbols are removed from
libraries or libraries are removed not as the primary library for
symbols.  In a lot of cases particularly with older projects, the cache
ends up being the primary symbol library.