gEDA-user: Help with creating schematics that can be netlisted/placed via PCB

["Samuel A. Falvo II" <sam.falvo@xxxxxxxxx>]

Greetings.  I've been on this list before, but haven't had the
opportunity to actually use gschem for a real-world project until now.

I created a small computer around the W65C816 microprocessor.  Please
see http://www.falvotech.com/projects/kestrel/8k.php .  After posting
the above site, I have had a few people who expressed a desire to
purchase the Kestrel 8K as a single-board computer for home-hacking
and other liesurely homebrew computing fun.

So, I decided to install the latest gEDA software via your
distribution ISO (nice BTW!), so that I can produce a pretty-printed
schematic diagram, and some get some PCB artwork created for it.  It
installed cleanly so far as I could tell.  Loading up gschem, I see it
is somewhat more refined than when I last remembered it.  Although
there are some UI-related issues that are outstanding to me, the
program is functional enough that I am able to get useful work done.

However, as you don't have a W65C816 component in your micro library,
I decided to create one.  I followed the instructions as described in the
online documentation for creating symbols.  I have attributes pinseq,
pintype, pinnumber, and pinlabel defined for all pins.  I have a
floating refdes=U? with just the U? visible.  I do have a device= and
footprint= attributes as well, also with their values visible (really,
is there a specific reason why I need both a hidden device= attribute
and a generic text label?  That just seems so wasteful to me.  If this
is an issue, please let me know why it is an issue, so that I have
some understanding should any errors appear in the future).  I also
have a description= attribute, which is entirely hidden.

Now, what I do to recreate my problem is this:

1.  Create a new schematic in some project.
2.  Place a W65C816 symbol.
3.  Place a 62256 symbol of some kind.  Doesn't matter which one.
4.  Place a 7400 symbol.
5.  Don't bother attempting to wire anything up.  Just save it, and
close gschem.  The idea is, I want pcb to see that there are three
chips.  Again, baby-steps.
6.  In the geda window, click on your .sch file, and instruct it to
create a PCB from it.

At step 6, I get the following errors:

gnetlist -g PCBboard -o blah.pcb blah.sch
gEDA/gnetlist version 20050313
gEDA/gnetlist comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; see COPYING for more details.
This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it under certain
conditions; please see the COPYING file for more details.

Remember to check that your schematic has no errors using the drc2 backend.
You can do it running 'gnetlist -g drc2 your_schematic.sch -o drc_output.txt'
and seeing the contents of the file drc_output.txt.

m4: /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/pcb/m4/common.m4: No such file or directory

Now, the problem here is, I did install my installation in my own home
directory.  Is this a bug, where it is trying to find common.m4 in
some system-shared location?  In order to perform this action, must I
install system-wide?  Both PATH and LD_LIBRARY_PATH are set correctly.

I think once I get this resolved, I'll undoubtedly run into other
errors, which I'll have no choice but to ask about here.  But this
error in particular is definitely obstructing any progress I'm having
on my project.

If anyone can tell me what I need to change to get it to locate the
correct common.m4 file, that would be greatly helpful.

Thanks.

--
Samuel A. Falvo II