gEDA-dev: SF.net patch status (5 open)

[Stuart Brorson]

>>>  Status: refdes-renum now does everything this tool seems to do
>>>  Action: FreeDog member(?) to liaise with Rik Wehbring and find out if
>>> there are any features not in refdes-renum that he thinks should be
>>> added. I will close (rejected) this patch if no objections by Sunday.
>>
>> Actually, I think this is a new program by the submitter.  Personally,
>> I see no reason to reject it.  We can have multiple refdes numbering
>> utilities IMO.  We already have at least four ways to number refdeses:
>> the Scheme stuff in gschem,
>> refdes_renum, grenum, and now this one.  Let's discuss what to do with
>> it on Sat instead of just rejecting it.  Why piss off a potential new
>> developer?
>
> Agree.  However, there really don't seem to be any major things that this does
> that refdes_renum doesn't.  In fact, I'd be happy to see the refdes
> renumbering tools narrowed down to one "official" command line tool and
> perhaps the one built in to gschem too; surely there's only so many different
> ways to update annotations in a schematic?

True, but my reasoning is political and not technical.  Why
discourage contributions?  If we reject contributions, then newbies
will not contribute.  Moving forward, I do agree that we should
discourage folks from writing more refdes numberers. But the past is
history, and we (probably me) encouraged that person to contribute
this utility.

In any event, gEDA tends to be rather open and catholic
(i.e. universal) about accepting new contributions, particularly
outside the core code.  I tend to think
that is one of our features.  It does lead to some chaos and
disorganization, but it also helps us thrive and grow.  We're an open
ecosystem.

FWIW, people tend to use refdes_renum since it's old and has been
mentioned in the documentation several times.  I believe the other
command line utilities are less used, except by the people who wrote
them.  However, I do know that grenum will fill in holes in refdes
numbering, while refdes_renum won't.  Therefore, there are reasons to
keep different utilities around.

Finally, since Ales is the boss, I'd like to hear what he thinks about
including yet another refdes numberer.

> If we put everyone's favourite little scripts into gEDA, it would
> end up being gigabytes... ;)

You're right.  But a large code base of high-quality tools sounds like
a good thing!  Anyway, moving forward, we can encourage these little
scripts to go to gedasymbols.org.  In fact, that may be what we should
do with this one...... We'll discuss it at the code sprint.

Stuart