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Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2017 23:29:11 +0100 (CET)
From: Roland Lutz <rlutz AT hedmen DOT org>
To: "John Griessen (john AT ecosensory DOT com) [via geda-user AT delorie DOT com]" <geda-user AT delorie DOT com>
Subject: Re: [geda-user] large difference in gnetlist error message between
 versions.
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On Fri, 10 Feb 2017, John Griessen (john AT ecosensory DOT com) [via 
geda-user AT delorie DOT com] wrote:
> I got the idea of coordinates, turned on the coords window, but they did 
> not seem to match any relevant symbols.

Look for the world coordinates, not the screen coordinates.  The error 
messages use a fixed-point format with two digits, so the coordinates 
shown by gschem should be larger by a factor of 100.  They point to the 
anchor point of the symbol (which usually lies to the bottom left of the 
symbol, as seen from the symbol itself).

> The confusing part was that I modified power and ground symbols and do 
> not like the way they work

How would you like them to work?

> so I was hitting a wall that is usually not tested, and had not very 
> helpful error messages.

gnetlist should provide helpful error messages in any case.

>>> When I use Vladimir's fork:
>>>
>>> Could not find refdes on component and could not find any special 
>>> attributes!
>>> Possible attribute conflict for refdes: T1
>>> name: numslots
>>> values: (#f 0)
>>> Possible attribute conflict for refdes: T1
>>> name: numslots
>>> values: (#f 0)
>>> DRC errors found. See output file.
>>
>> The other messages are unrelated to this error.  In fact, they are 
>> misleading because they state a non-error (the numslot= attribute being 
>> set on one component of a package and not on another).
>
> They maybe unrelated to the particular error, but comments about T1 
> conflict were completely missing in the other version

As far as I can see, there is no conflict in T1.  One component with 
refdes=T1 has a numslots=0 attribute while the other one doesn't have it. 
This is not an error.

> and they were helpful for fixing errors and debugging and ruling out 
> things.

In what way were they helpful?

> To me, the error messages were confusing and did not help.
> They need work.

How should the error messages have been in order to be more helpful?