gEDA-dev: footprint cleanup

[John Luciani]

On 8/28/06, Peter TB Brett <peter at peter-b.co.uk> wrote:
>
> > The thing I don't particularly care for is that there is no real reason
> > that we can't run m4 over all the footprints at compile time or maybe
> > even at 'make dist' time. The results could be put into a newlib
> > library and then you don't need m4 at runtime anymore.
>
> No, I don't think that's a good idea at all, with no offence meant.  What I
> *do* think is that a clearer delineation between, and explanation of, the two
> different libraries would be very useful.  For instance, rather than
> pregenerating the list of available M4 footprints for display in the pcblib,
> why not have some sort of automatically generated documentation of the syntax
> for a particular footprint type.

I agree with Dan on this. Running m4 at compile time or 'make dist' time will
remove a common newbie problem --- two methods to retrieve a footprint in
PCB. After m4 is run and all of the footprints are in a directory (or
tree) a user
can browse the directory. With IPC7351-like naming it is easy to find which
footprint you want. (I usually pick footprints using dired mode in EMACS).

> Now that would be user-friendly *and* flexible.  Although perhaps it would be
> necessary to migrate away from M4.

It is not necessary to change tools.

* Pick your favorite tool that will output newlib format files.
* Write your footprint generator
* Run the generator and copy your newlib files to the footprint directory.

(* jcl *)

P.S.

> What about Perl, based around John Luciani's excellent library?

Glad you liked my library. Thanks.


-- 
http://www.luciani.org