Re: gEDA-user: Free Dog meeting report: Notes on the topics we discussed

[sdb@xxxxxxxxxx (Stuart Brorson)]

> >         However, what if libgeda stored a cryptographic signature/hash of
> > the symbol file contents along with the filename in the schematics?
> > The signature can be something along the lines of an md5sum string (maybe
> > not so long, but long to uniquely identify the contents).  When a symbol
> > is loaded from disk, the signatures are compared and if they don't match,
> > a warning is issued.  

[ . . . .  edit . . . .]

> It sounds like a good idea.
> 
>   * Notifies the user when a symbol in a design has changed.
>   * Does not break existing designs.
>   * Works with the exsiting symbol library structure.

Yeah, I like it too.  I prefer it over embedding library info into the
schematic.   

My only question is:  Can the mechanism be generalized usefully?  That
is, are there other things done in gEDA which would benefit from
performing an MD5 type sum to validate a file read-in? 

Offhand, I couldn't think of anything, but others may have a smart
idea.

Stuart