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Date: Sat, 25 Jul 2015 12:01:15 +0200 (CEST)
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To: geda-user AT delorie DOT com
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From: gedau AT igor2 DOT repo DOT hu
Subject: [geda-user] [pcb-rnd] Release 1.0.1
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Hello PCB users,

I'm proud to announce the release of pcb-rnd 1.0.1, available at
http://repo.hu/projects/pcb-rnd/releases

pcb-rnd is a PCB fork offering a collection of random feature
patches. The flagship features are:

  - internal connections in footprints

  - (explicitly flagged) elements on the pcb that are not part
    of the schematics - they don't cause shorts and gsch2pcb-rnd
    doesn't remove them. Useful for smd 0 ohm resistors placed because
    of routing.

  - enhanced display of short circuits using the minimal cut algorithm

  - parametric footprints: footprints generated on the fly; generators
    written in any programming language (no more hardwired m4 dependency)

A full list of features, their description, screenshots and examples
can be found at http://repo.hu/projects/pcb-rnd

Feedback, suggestions and especially testing are welcome.

Regards,

Igor2


**** Detailed release notes of the new version ****

pcb-rnd 1.0.1
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
There are two major changes for release 1.0.1:
  1. autotools replaced with scconfig
  2. rework of the footprint infrastructure

Other changes are minor bug fixes.

1. Scconfig

Autotools is big, slow, hard to maintain and often fails badly
on any non-mainstream system. Scconfig is small, simple, and fast.
It supports many systems. It may still fail on some exotic systems,
but at least it's much easier to fix it when it fails.

2. Footprint infrastructure rework

Pcb-rnd features new mini-library written in C. It is responsible for
searching and loading footprints. Search is done on a simple search
path - a lot of heuristics based on base directories and library names
are removed in favor of the flat list of paths. Both pcb-rnd and
gsch2pcb-rnd uses the same code so their footprint search mechanism
always match.

Generated footprints are not m4-specific anymore. A lot of code has been
removed from both pcb-rnd and gsch2pcb-rnd. Now they both call external
programs using the shell to generate the footprint, without assuming they
are written in m4.

The syntax of generated footprints changed: if a footprint name
(footprint gschem attribute) contains parenthesis, it is to be generated,
else it's just the name of a file footprint.

New default footprint library shipped with pcb-rnd. Newlib/ and lib/
has been removed in favor of pcblib/, which is a minimalistic footprint
library containing essential footprints only. Most footprints are imported
from Newlib (geda/) and some from openhw on repo.hu.