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Re: Symbol library code changes

 

From the peanut gallery:
I know 6.0 symbol library handling has many significant differences versus 5.x.  Eventually, if I want to keep myself at or near the bleeding edge, I'll have to port my ODBC stuff to the 6.0 way of doing things.  A couple questions:

1. Is there any documentation of the design, or is my best bet just studying the code? 2. I guess there will be some means for converting a 5.x symbol library to 6.0, yes?  Regardless of the actual storage mechanism (filesystem, ODBC, TCP over carrier pigeon), the format is just different (I remember something about switching to S-code), so there'll have to be some way to convert from the older SCH/LIB format to S-code, right?

Thanks,
-Brian Henning


On 11/7/19 2:30 PM, Wayne Stambaugh wrote:
Hey Seth,

On 11/7/19 12:22 PM, Seth Hillbrand wrote:
On 2019-11-06 12:34, Wayne Stambaugh wrote:
I finally finish up the initial attempt at simple inheritance for the
symbol library code.  The change is non-trivial and will likely have
some unexpected side affects that I missed.  I pushed the branch to my
personal repo[1] and I would like a few pair of extra eyes on it before
I merge it into master.  If you prefer, I can set up a merge request
from this branch in Launchpad.

The biggest user facing change is that the concept of aliases is gone
which means internally, the LIB_ALIAS object has been removed and all of
the information it managed was moved into LIB_PART.  This actually
simplified some of the UI code but made the LIB_MANAGER and LIB_PART
object code more complicated.  The symbol library editor works
significantly different now.  When you select a derived part (formerly a
LIB_ALIAS), it will show the parent symbol that it was derived from
darkened and all of the edit features disabled.  Until the new symbol
file format is done and writing to the legacy symbol file format is
deprecated, this restriction will have to remain in place.  The
properties editor no longer has an aliases panel and is limited to what
it can change in the derived or parent symbols depending on which symbol
is currently being edited.  I suspect this will be the biggest stumbling
block for existing users so if you can think of a better way to handle
this, I'm open to suggestion.  The other thing that I am concerned about
is symbol library editing.  There were a lot of LIB_MANAGER object
changes which I am not 100% confident in.

Just a couple of other internal changes to be aware of:

A flattened copy of the symbol is used in SCH_COMPONENT instead of
relying on the weak reference to the library symbol.  This way we don't
have to worry about the shared pointer disappearing and causing issues.
However, this will require that we be diligent about updating modified
symbol libraries in the schematic.  Otherwise, the schematic could
change the next time it is loaded.  I'm open to changing this back if we
think it's going to be an issue.

There is now a compare function for the LIB_PART object which can be
rather tricky.  I created a new test suite inside the current LIB_PART
test file so if you change anything, please run the test to ensure
nothing gets broken.  I also added a bunch of other new tests for the
LIB_PART object.

I added code to DIALOG_SHIM to allow the caller to reset the last dialog
size when hiding dialog control state changes between dialog instances.
We have some dialog windows that are not the correct default size
depending on which controls are shown so there is now a convenient way
to address this.

Please let me know if you find anything so I can get it fixed and merged
into master.  The next step is to convert the schematic internal units
from 1mil to 10nm.  Once that step is complete, I will knock out the new
symbol library format.  Thanks in advance for the help.

Cheers,

Wayne

[1]:https://code.launchpad.net/~stambaughw/kicad/+git/kicad-dev/+ref/lib-alias-merge


Hi Wayne-

I'm psyched to see this progress!  Congrats.  I'll have a chance to
fully test after next week but I wanted to get you the code read
feedback before then.

1) Compare function:
- It looks like rhs isn't checked for end() in the loop.  While size
gets checked ahead of time, we've had a couple cases where code gets
added between checks and loops in the past, so it's probably safer to
put the check in the loop.
- Same with the footprint check.  Ideally, these would be the same style
(iterators vs. dereference) but that's minor
- Do we expect these containers to remain sorted?
I'm not sure thats strictly necessary but I will take a look at it.

2) You have a few C-style casts in Flatten()>
3) The LIB_PART() copy constructor should take a const reference rather
than the existing one, that should remove the requirement of using
const_cast in Flatten()
Gaaa!  How did I miss that?

4) That ternary in GetNextDrawItem() is breaking my brain a bit.
This will only get worse with multiple inheritance.  Draw items from
each parent will have to be recused to create a final image of the symbol.

5) In footprint_info.h, if we are returning the wxString itself (instead
of the reference), it shouldn't be const.  (addendum: Also loadAliases())
Missed another one.

6) sch_view.cpp has a couple c-style casts that can probably be
compressed into our dyn_cast routine.

7) DeleteSymbol mixes up it and it1 in the while() loop.
I'll take a look at it.

I can't wait to test it out!  On the usability issue for aliases, I
suspect that this is a time limited constraint, so there shouldn't be
large issues as people should not be building aliased libraries with the
master branch at this point.  We may want to clarify that in a list
message.  Overall, I am very excited for the new formats.  Thanks again
for taking on this huge job!
Thanks for the review, I should have most of the issues above fixed by
in the next day or so.  There are lot more big changes coming.  I
desperately want to have the new file formats in place by FOSDEM.

Cheers,

Wayne

Best-
Seth

Seth Hillbrand
KiCad Services Corporation
https://www.kipro-pcb.com
+1 530 302 5483 | +1 212 603 9372
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