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Date: Fri, 4 Sep 2020 00:59:11 +0200 (CEST)
From: Roland Lutz <rlutz AT hedmen DOT org>
To: "Vladimir Zhbanov (vzhbanov AT gmail DOT com) [via geda-help AT delorie DOT com]" <geda-help AT delorie DOT com>
Subject: Re: [geda-help] Linux
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On Thu, 3 Sep 2020, Vladimir Zhbanov (vzhbanov AT gmail DOT com) [via 
geda-help AT delorie DOT com] wrote:
> The third [motivation] was restricting of introducing of third party 
> code written in whichever language in order to maintain code base 
> maintainable given what man-power we had all the time :-)

The use of Python in gEDA/gaf was preceded by an extensive discussion 
about the advantages and disadvantages of various languages in question.

Besides that – given the amount of work I had already done at that point 
and the fact that I obviously cared about the code I contributed, how can 
you now claim this was ever about the question of it being maintained?


> Roland decided (in my view) to transform geda-gaf into his xi/xorn by 
> replacing some pieces of C and Guile project code with his new Python 
> code.

That's not correct.

1. Since the wish for a more integrated GUI between gschem and PCB was 
coming up again and again, and GTK had a history of removing features 
which were important for gschem, I wrote Xi and its associated toolkit 
from scratch as a unified GUI for gEDA/gaf and PCB.

   http://hedmen.org/xi/

It was never used due to the lack of a proper abstraction layer and API.

2. Partly in response to that, I wrote libxornstorage, a C library, from 
scratch as a replacement for the gEDA/gaf storage routines.  This library 
has Python bindings, but you could (and are encouraged to) create bindings 
for whichever language you want to write code in.

3. The main practical use case for this was as a refactoring aid for 
gnetlist.  The gnetlist code was in its existing form practically 
unmaintainable, so I put a lot of effort into converting it to a more 
usable form, making extra sure I didn't accidentally introduce changes 
which would break existing projects.


> Lepton has no issues with obsolete Guile and Python versions

Since I wanted to make the transition as smooth as possible, I wrote glue 
code that allowed existing Scheme backends to be run with the Python code.

Guile 2.2 removed the "scm_frame_procedure" function which is crucial for 
having a Guile <-> Python bridge.  So while I *could* bump the Guile 
dependency to a higher version at any point, I believe it may be 
desireable to keep that feature for some more time.

CPython 3 uses a different extension API than CPython 2.  While I could go 
through the extension code, manually updating it to the new API, I believe 
it is far better to migrate to an implementation-agnostic API like 
PyPy/cffi.  As far as I know, this hasn't been done for a project like 
gEDA/gaf before, so I have to overcome some new kinds of problems.

(If anyone who knows their way around PyPy/cffi is reading this, please 
feel free to join the effort!)


> IMO, xorn could live as a separate project, though without geda-gaf it 
> could die, which I consider an only reason why Roland strived to include 
> it in geda-gaf

As I have outlined in the other mail, Xorn is a custom-tailored set of 
libraries for gEDA/gaf.  Of course I included them in gEDA/gaf, this is 
the whole point.  (It may have been wiser to call them "geda-libs" or 
something like that, though.)


Roland

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