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Re: V6 merge update

 

Seth,

On 2/21/2019 10:16 PM, Seth Hillbrand wrote:
> Am 2019-02-21 15:21, schrieb Wayne Stambaugh:
>> Since we are nearing the 5.1.0 release, I want to get an idea of what
>> major merges are ready to go once 5.1 is branched.  I know Jon's netlist
>> code is ready to merge and I'm pretty sure that should be the first big
>> merge.  Does anyone else have any major changes they want to merge as
>> soon as v6 starts?  I would like to get an idea of what changes to
>> expect so we can avoid any serious merge chaos.  Please let me know what
>> you have in the queue so I can get an idea of how we should proceed with
>> the merges.
> 
> I know that JP has some updates for the pad corners and I have a patch
> set for unifying graphical items with track segments.  But both of these
> are file format changes, so I'd like some thoughts on the following idea
> first:
> 
> Once v6 is started, I'd like to freeze the v5 parsers and make a copy of
> the parsers for v6.  This would mean that all new format features would
> be implemented in a separate parser while any changes to underlying
> structures would require updates in three parsers (legacy, v5 and v6). 
> This will be an "of course" for eeschema because we are re-working the
> format to s-expr but I think that it also makes sense to hold a fixed
> copy of the v5 parser with all its warts.

I'm not sure about this.  It really hasn't been necessary in the past
because we have made small incremental changes as we've added new
features.  AFAIR, the last parser issue went back to the malformed text
formatting bug which dated back the original implementation.  Do we
really need to keep two separate versions of the file parser and are we
planning to do this for every new version?  Seems like a lot of extra
work for little net gain.

> 
> Some requirements to do this:
> - unit tests that open v5 files and save to a known good v6 files
> - unit tests that load v5 files and compare expected data structures
> 
> Nice to haves (but not required):
> - Save-as function that allows downgrades with limited feature sets

I am not terribly thrilled about this idea.  It would require polluting
the formatter with a bunch of file format conditional checks.  Given
that the cost of upgrading to KiCad is $0, I don't see the manpower to
implement it and the potential code mess it will create is worth the
effort.  Our policy up to this point has been not to do this.

> 
> Do people have concerns with this idea?
> 
> -S


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