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From: John Griessen <john AT ecosensory DOT com>
Subject: [geda-user] ideas on slotting and mechanisms for grouping/associating
 heterogenous symbols.
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Date: Sat, 2 Jan 2016 11:15:01 -0600
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On 01/01/2016 05:51 PM, DJ Delorie wrote:
 > We need a separate database that maps light symbols to heavy symbols.
 > That database can contain information about pin/gate swapping for
 > downstreams that need it.  Gnetlist (or some other go-between) will
 > have to combine that information plus the current "as-built" from
 > downstream to provide a new "should-be-built" to the downstream.
 >
 > This*should*  make it easier to do swapping at layout (which I think
 > is more appropriate anyway), reuse schematics for multiple downstreams
 > (by swapping databases), and various other things.

Swapifying vs. Heavifying:

I am not sure where that database would be in your plan, but to me, external
to gschem or pcb would be best, and it could be a gnetlist backend.

The "as built" of your post is to me, just the "standard" symbol version, which is the default
assignment in a datasheet of a part.  I would not want to reuse schematics by adding some
external delta patch to it, but rather by adding more  attribs to the "standard" symbol.
A change to a pinswap version would mean changing added pinswap attribs not just adding them.
That change could be saved in a project dir by a version name, and have multiple versions there
as you figure how to layout an FPGA.  I'd rather that essential info of version be in the schematic project dir
than perhaps in the layout project dir.

Heavifying symbols could use a database.  SQLite comes to mind as a match to these projects.

Swapifying could easily be dealt with as attribs in schematics, pinswap files, and netlists
with no database engine needed.  But I've not extracted this data from a datasheet yet, nor prototyped any of this kind of code 
and not a huge coder so...


On 01/02/2016 03:52 AM, Peter Clifton (petercjclifton AT googlemail DOT com) [via geda-user AT delorie DOT com] wrote:
 > I would love to see things like slotting move to being a plugin, for example.

I agree -- that would have to have big simplifying effects on coding effort levels.  Classical slotting is old fashioned
and should not be hampering development by being in the core code...