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Date: Wed, 12 Aug 2015 20:41:01 +0530
Message-ID: <CALT8Ef5T9Jg_kcA+RbmZ5=CLP4baofHZmabkjrEyZKEy+UZE+A@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [geda-user] multiple gEDA users sharing networked libraries
From: "Shashank Chintalagiri (shashank DOT chintalagiri AT gmail DOT com) [via geda-user AT delorie DOT com]" <geda-user AT delorie DOT com>
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On Wed, Aug 12, 2015 at 8:06 PM, Ouabache Designworks
(z3qmtr45 AT gmail DOT com) [via geda-user AT delorie DOT com]
<geda-user AT delorie DOT com> wrote:
>> > We're considering keeping symbol & footprint libraries on a networked
>> > server, so that several designers can refer and contribute to common
>> > components and workfiles.
>>
>> That is what version control does for us.
>>
>
> Not quite. That works in the world of software but not for hardware. You may
> have multiple versions of a component under version control but you can only
> access one at a time. If you are combining designs that use different
> versions  then you need all of them at the same time.
>

Version control along with the gEDA file naming conventions works
pretty well. We use SVN to control our library, so we haven't had to
deal with handling branches and multiple checkouts of a distributed
VCS like git. This was more by accident than design, though.

We find it's easier to rely on symbol versioning with the filename
(U-<something>-<n>.sym) rather by with the symversion attribute.
Ideally, perhaps it should be 'and' instead of 'rather that', but
reliably ensuring people do keep symversion up to date and use is
correctly is not something we're very confident of being able to do.

One problem we've had with using a networked library is being able to
effectively curate the library. We've had issues arising from new
contributors checking in symbols on strange grids or not translated to
origin. Similarly, symbol appearance conventions are not always
followed, resulting in symbols which have the pins spaced by 500 or
300 mils instead. This wouldn't be so much of a problem if it wasn't
also the sort of thing that gets noticed only a long way down the
line, by which time the symbol's found it's way into various
schematics. None of this is gEDA or the VCSs fault, though. I'm just
mentioning it so you know to look for it - perhaps you can prevent it
before it happens if you're starting from a clean slate.

Shashank


-- 

Chintalagiri Shashank
Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur

http://blog.chintal.in