Re: gEDA-user: next PCB release - 1.99za vs 4.0

[Peter Clifton <pcjc2@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, 2010-09-08 at 17:14 -0700, Steven Michalske wrote:
> On Sep 7, 2010, at 9:01 AM, DJ Delorie wrote:
> 
> > 
> >> Shall we / I push this? I think it looks good overall.
> > 
> > I desparately need to push out a release to get the LF work
> > "published" in order to close it out.  Maybe I'll do a 1.99za release
> > just to accomplish those goals, then we can cram in all the new
> > functionality we can for the 4.0 release.  Let's focus on critical bug
> > fixes for a few days and get that out, then talk about what "4.0"
> > means.
> > 
> > 
> > My 4.0 short list is:
> > 
> 
> Automatic least version required file saving.
> 	Set the file format version based on features used, not the version of PCB
> 		This will become valuable as we add features like blind vias, custom pad stacks etc....

This becomes a bit of a pain as you could end up with a combinatorial
explosion of versions to test-against for QA. (Not to mention the ever
growing volume of export code).

How far do we take this.. "your polygon geometry is such that it
triggers a known bug in PCB V1.99c", insist on saving with later
file-version?

PCB has a lot of legacy file-parsing capability, I don't want to even
think about adding code to allow saving elements out in the old style
syntax, or with non-symbolic flags etc...

All these changes have come and gone, each likely introducing
non-forwards compatible file format changes. (IE. old versions would
bork when opening the newer files). If we had kept code to save out all
of these versions, PCB's code-base would be in a huge mess.


I guess one option would be to make the file-version check a WARNING
only, and rely on syntax errors in the parser to tell the user something
went wrong when loading their newer format file. (This would allow the
polygon holes case). I'm not so certain though.. as if ignoring the
version number, there could be classes of change which cause subtle
failures rather than an obvious error on load.

-- 
Peter Clifton

Electrical Engineering Division,
Engineering Department,
University of Cambridge,
9, JJ Thomson Avenue,
Cambridge
CB3 0FA

Tel: +44 (0)7729 980173 - (No signal in the lab!)
Tel: +44 (0)1223 748328 - (Shared lab phone, ask for me)



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