kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Chris Pavlina <pavlina.chris@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, Jan 17, 2018 at 07:55:02AM +0000, Matthijs Kooijman wrote:
> Hi Wayne,
> 
> > KiCad should not be determining which libraries get loaded just because
> > our library layout gets more complex.  I would reject any design changed
> > that loaded libraries outside the users control.  Maybe I'm misreading
> > this but it kind of sounds like that to me.
> My proposal would indeed be to load libraries, without the user
> configuring each individual library. However, the user would configure
> the entire thing (e.g. "load *all* libraries from the default
> distribution") and can disable the entire thing (and load libraries
> individually) if he wants more control.
> 
> As a user, that is exactly the amount of control I want. I don't realy
> care about which official libraries are in my library list exactly, I
> just want all of them so I have the broadest choice in components and
> footprints.
> 
> Additionally, I don't really want to think about this when upgrading. If
> I upgrade the libraries package, I really want to still be able to just
> use all official libraries, without having to check after each upgrade
> if there is perhaps a new .lib file that was not there before (which, I
> think, involves removing them all and re-adding them as the easiest way
> to do that). Currently, if some symbols are split off into a new
> library, and I forget to check this, they will silently disappear from
> my choice of symbols, and I might not even realize this (and simply
> assume a symbol I am looking for does not exist yet).
> 
> Even if I wanted to go through the trouble of checking the library list
> on upgrades, I might not always actually realise that I've upgraded when
> using distribution packages that get upgraded as part of a bigger
> upgrade.
> 
> What I write here is how *I* would like to see things as a user. I can
> imagine this applies to more, if not most, users as well.

As a user, 10000% agree.

> 
> 
> One additional caveat I recently realized: Even if you would
> automaticlaly update the list of libraries, you will additionally need
> to rename/remap some symbols, since symbol references include the
> library name in v5. One way I can imagine this works is to also include
> a "rename" specification (perhaps similar to the current rename.json),
> which can be used by KiCad to automatically migrate older symbol
> references. Or perhaps the rescue dialog can be improved to look among
> other libraries for a symbol with the same name and let the user choose
> between relinking to such a symbol, or resueing one from the cache.
> 
> Gr.
> 
> Matthijs