Success! was Re: gEDA-user: gsch2pcb : coming up empty

[Andy Peters]

On Jan 3, 2007, at 2:12 PM, Hans Nieuwenhuis wrote:

> On Wed, 3 Jan 2007 10:32:19 -0700
> Andy Peters <devel at latke.net> wrote:
>
>> On Jan 3, 2007, at 8:03 AM, Hans Nieuwenhuis wrote:
>>
>>> Sorry for me jumping in, but I remembered a situation a while ago
>>> having the same problem also. The cause of the problem is the
>>> dashes in
>>> the filename of the footprint. If the OP had not used multiple  
>>> dashes
>>> there would not have been a problem. After I figured out I forgot
>>> about
>>> it and I should have filed a bug instead.
>>
>> That's not it; John Luciani's library is full of parts with all
>> manner of dashes and underscores.
>>
>
> My problem went away after finding and removing some old geda  
> libraries (I know it is a FAQ :-) and re-installing the latest  
> versions from source, maybe that helps for you too.

Whilst browsing the archives of this list, I came across a message  
that asked how to force gsch2pcb to ignore the old m4 libraries  
entirely (answer: simply delete or rename the directory).  From its  
output, it appeared that the gsch2pcb program seemed to think that  
the "bad" symbols were somehow supposed to be in the m4 library.

So I shitcanned the m4 library entirely ($ mv /sw/share/pcb/m4 /sw/ 
share/pcb/_m4) and gsch2pcb works ...

Progress!

-a

PS: I found in the archives a rather heated discussion about the  
relevance of the m4 libraries in particular and the m4 macro  
processor itself in general.  Somebody wondered what Unix programs,  
other than pcb, used m4, and there was no answer.   Turns out there  
IS an answer, and it's a biggie: sendmail configuration files are all  
written to use m4.  One wonders if sendmail's inscrutable  
configuration was the reason exim, qmail and postfix were developed!   
The sendmail book is by far the thickest of all of the O'Reilly  
books, even if you consider that it's printed on the thinnest- 
possible paper in the smallest possible typeface.  I like the bat,  
though.