kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@xxxxxxxxx>]

Any code contributed to KiCad would have to be release under the GPL3+
or compatible license to be accepted.  Linking to proprietary drivers is
not an issue since we already link to Windows and MacOS proprietrary
libraries in order to provide KiCad on those platforms.  We just cannot
ship those libraries.  Given that KiCad supports Linux, Windows, and
macOS, we would prefer to provide a comparable experience on all
supported platforms.

Cheers,

Wayne

On 2/25/21 9:45 AM, Jon Evans wrote:
> As long as the experience is the same on all platforms (Win, Mac, Linux)
> and KiCad does not require any proprietary libraries to compile, I think
> it is up to Wayne whether or not an optional dependency on a proprietary
> library on Windows is acceptable.
> 
> But, I would like to hear from Markus on the topic first -- if other
> software is successfully using websockets to provide a good interface to
> 3dconnexion hardware on Windows, maybe it is not as bad as you fear?
> 
> -Jon
> 
> On Thu, Feb 25, 2021 at 9:38 AM Mark Roszko <mark.roszko@xxxxxxxxx
> <mailto:mark.roszko@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
> 
>     On another note, I personally am not a fan of websockets usage
>     locally on Windows. In corporate environments there's going to be
>     hell with security software interfering and in general it's fragile.
> 
>     I personally would rather just link against the 3dconnexion library
>     directly. We have the MSVC builds now, we can compile against MSVC
>     built libraries no problem. MSYS2 builds would just remain without it.
> 
>     But just my opinion on this.
> 
>     On Thu, Feb 25, 2021 at 9:32 AM Jon Evans <jon@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>     <mailto:jon@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
> 
>         That is a good point Mark, we could either have this behind a
>         flag so that it only gets enabled/compiled with new-enough Boost
>         versions, or investigate a different websockets library.
> 
>         I'm not sure the overlap of 3dconnexion users and 18.04 users is
>         large enough to rule that approach out, at least if there are no
>         other issues with Beast.
> 
>         -Jon
> 
>         On Thu, Feb 25, 2021 at 9:23 AM Mark Roszko
>         <mark.roszko@xxxxxxxxx <mailto:mark.roszko@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
> 
>             * Boost 1.65 being the version Ubuntu 18.04 LTS currently
>             has and are committed to support until EOL.
> 
>             On Thu, Feb 25, 2021 at 9:19 AM Mark Roszko
>             <mark.roszko@xxxxxxxxx <mailto:mark.roszko@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
> 
>                 Markus,
> 
>                 We currently require support for a minimum of boost 1.59
>                 due to Linux distros lagging behind. boost/beast is not
>                 a viable option as beast did not appear in boost until 1.66.
> 
>                 From some offhand sounding out we may be able to bump
>                 the minimum to 1.65 but that doesn't help :/
> 
> 
>                 Regards,
>                 Mark
> 
>                 On Thu, Feb 25, 2021 at 9:00 AM Jon Evans
>                 <jon@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:jon@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
> 
>                     Hello Markus,
> 
>                     This is exciting news, as some of our users are also
>                     big fans of 3dconnexion products[1]
> 
>                     Others have looked in to what it would take in the
>                     past, but there were some questions about the need
>                     for proprietary drivers on some platforms[2]
> 
>                     It sounds like this websocket interface is a new
>                     approach that doesn't require any additional
>                     libraries for KiCad to link against?
>                     Does the hardware use some other daemon process to
>                     bridge between the device driver and websockets?
> 
>                     As you may know, KiCad uses wxWidgets as a
>                     framework, so you probably want to plug in to the wx
>                     event loop on the main thread.
>                     There are some guidelines on this in their docs[3].
> 
>                     You probably want to check out
>                     ./common/view/wx_view_controls.cpp to see how
>                     existing input events are handled by the 2D canvases.
>                     I guess your new code would hook in here somewhere,
>                     and provide additional event handlers to manage the
>                     data from the 3D device.
>                     Your communication thread should be able to post
>                     wxWidgets events to the main thread and then we can
>                     consume them here.
> 
>                     By the way: although the wx docs use wxThread, I
>                     think this general concept should work with C++
>                     standard libraries threads just fine.
>                     The documentation for wxEvtHandler::QueueEvent may
>                     also be useful[4]
> 
>                     Hope this helps!
> 
>                     Best,
>                     Jon
> 
>                     [1] https://gitlab.com/kicad/code/kicad/-/issues/4951
>                     [2]
>                     https://lists.launchpad.net/kicad-developers/msg29464.html
>                     [3]
>                     https://wiki.wxwidgets.org/Inter-Thread_and_Inter-Process_communication#Sending_events_to_the_main_thread_-_wxWidgets_3_only
>                     [4]
>                     https://docs.wxwidgets.org/3.0/classwx_evt_handler.html#acffd03bf407a856166ea71ef0318b59a
> 
> 
>                     On Thu, Feb 25, 2021 at 1:47 AM Markus Bonk
>                     <markus_bonk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>                     <mailto:markus_bonk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
> 
>                         Hi,____
> 
>                         __ __
> 
>                         I am currently investigating adding support for
>                         3D input devices to pcbnew. The plan is to use a
>                         websocket interface (boost/beast) to communicate
>                         with the 3D device. Effectively the
>                         communication runs on an extra thread. Somewhere
>                         the event code will need to switch to executing
>                         on the main thread. ____
> 
>                         __ __
> 
>                         One way of achieving this on say win32 might be
>                         to add functors to a queue post a message to a
>                         message window handler in the main thread which
>                         empties the queue and invokes the functor.____
> 
>                         __ __
> 
>                         Is such a mechanism already in place in KiCAD?
>                         What is the KiCAD recommended solution to the
>                         issue?____
> 
>                         __ __
> 
>                         Thanks____
> 
>                         -Markus____
> 
>                         __ __
> 
>                         __ __
> 
>                         ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
>                         *Markus Bonk*
>                         Senior Software Engineer
> 
>                         Clarita-Bernhard-Str. 18
>                         81249 München
>                         Germany
> 
>                         	
>                         markus_bonk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>                         <mailto:markus_bonk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx><mailto:%7BE-mail%7D>
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> 
>                 -- 
>                 Mark
> 
> 
> 
>             -- 
>             Mark
> 
> 
> 
>     -- 
>     Mark
> 
> 
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