Personally I'm in favor of bumping the version with every feature. I can't see it getting too annoying on the development branch, as people who use that generally keep it up to date anyway - and I think it's sane to require them to. Either use a release, or use development head. :)
On Thu, Apr 07, 2016 at 11:52:08AM -0400, Wayne Stambaugh wrote: > On 4/7/2016 9:47 AM, Chris Pavlina wrote: > > Hi all, > > > > I'm targeting this email primarily at Wayne as versioning and release > > policy is > > involved. > > > > We've got a bit of a problem right now. We're currently adding features to > > the > > pcbnew format - JP just merged rounded-rect pads and has a patch in > > development > > for custom pads, and I'm looking at a patch to add angled fields. Problem > > is: > > JPs rounded rectangle commit is a problem. I did not have a chance to > review JP's patch. I would have recommended a file version bump. > > Angled text support should not be a problem. Text angles are already > saved as floating point numbers so using angles other than 0, 90, 180, > and 270 should not cause any issues but that hasn't been tested. > > > > > 1. We're not bumping the file format version, so even though we're writing > > files that contain features (actual COPPER features!) that old versions > > won't > > understand, we're not marking them as such, so they'll either give nasty > > file-corrupted errors, or fail to load silently. > > Older versions of Pcbnew will fail to load because the new board file > rounded rectangle tokens are not supported by the stable release board > file parser. > > The angled text may be more problematic because the file will load but > what happens when the text displayed may lead to some interesting results. > > > > > 2. Even if we did, pcbnew currently ignores the format version. > > > > > > I propose the following: > > > > 1. Patch pcbnew to check the format version and give a friendly "your KiCad > > may > > be out of date"-style warning if it's too high a number. > > Makes sense to me. Warning the user that the file may not load in > advance is probably more friendly than the file parser error that will > be displayed when the file fails to load. > > > > > 2. Accelerate this patch to a minor stable release to get it out there > > before > > these new features make it into the next major release. > > I will merge it into the stable branch when it's available. > > > > > 3. Adopt a policy of properly bumping the version number any time a feature > > is > > added. > > I agree that adding new features should bump the file format version. > Whether we should do this for once each feature or once each development > cycle is debatable. I tend to lean towards each feature but we should > coordinate file system changes and attempt to make changes to the parser > and output formatter in bulk even if we do not implement the features at > that time. Otherwise we could bump the file revision multiple times > during each development cycle which could get annoying depending on the > frequency of file version changes. > > > > > Thoughts? > > > > -- Chris > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers > > Post to : kicad-developers@lists.launchpad.net > > Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers > > More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp > > > > _______________________________________________ > Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers > Post to : kicad-developers@lists.launchpad.net > Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers > More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp _______________________________________________ Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers Post to : kicad-developers@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
