gEDA-user: Per-project component libraries

[Mark Cianfaglione]

Just to add a slightly different view from my point of view...

Generally in most $$$ tools the components are selected from a common 
library. When you "archive" the design it captures a copy of each 
component into a local copy. This archiving also then alters the library 
config file so that it will only look locally(design archive = local) for 
any components first. If any additional components are required it can 
retrieve them from the common directory as it won't find them in the local 
directories. Mind you this behaviour is possibly a user defined 
capability.

I also agree with the principle of a symbol with a part selector.  For 
example if a resistor gets selected a small window could pop open and one 
can select the value/footprint/manufacturer that they wish. These tables 
of parts could be generated using a perl script (I currently do this with 
Cadence Concept/Allegro) It saves a lot of time...

Mark


> 
> However, this is not so simple as you make it sound.  Currently, there 
are 
> many places where gschem makes the assumption that a view is associated 
with 
> a file on disk.  Secondly, there are a number of issues to resolve:
> 
>  - How should gschem decide which symbols in the original schematic to 
update?
> 
>  - How would updating work?
> 
>  - How would you keep all of the symbols in your multiple-schematic 
project in
>    sync?
> 
> While I agree that it would be nice to edit an embedded symbol, there 
are 
> major technical hurdles to overcome.  Embedded symbols are implemented 
in a 
> rather "brute force" fashion currently.  Only recently was I able to 
> eliminate checks for "EMBEDDED" in the symbol name (except for in the 
file IO 
> code).
> 
> The "Right Thing", I believe, would be for symbols to be embedded 
> _separately_ 
> from the symbols _instances_.  So if you have 80 resistors in your 
schematic, 
> there would be one copy of the resistor symbol in the file, and when the 

> system looks for a "RESISTOR" symbol it'll use the embedded version 
> preferentially to the library version.
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