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Date: Sun, 12 Feb 2017 11:04:32 +0100 (CET)
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On Sun, 12 Feb 2017, Vladimir Zhbanov (vzhbanov AT gmail DOT com) [via geda-user AT delorie DOT com] wrote:

> cleaner, though stopped due to having no support for this in
> mainline pcb

Disclaimer:

I am honestly not trolling here, just sharing my experience. I am 
absolutely not trying to say what you should do in your branch or in 
general. What I say is not even specific to this case, it's really just a 
generic consideration that I genuinely think could be useful to consider.

Facts:

We've been working on import/export of random external autorouters, 
schematics editors, simulatros and tools in pcb-rnd lately. Some of these 
external tools are small, some are big. Some free, some proprietary. A 
common pattern tho is that we can build a working first version of such a 
bridge in a few hours or at most in a few days. They are cheap. Even all 
of them together seem to be cheap.

Personal opinions:

I believe the future of gEDA (and generally anything non-KiCad on the free 
EDA tool scene) is not some centralized effort, not some official big 
pack, not an official all-in-one distribution. I think the future is 
building random bridges between random tools, without caring whether a 
given bridge would be also a bridge to all other similar tools or not. If 
we have a critical mass of such bridges, a random collection of the tools 
start to form an useful suite. If we don't, users will switch to KiCad or 
Altium, etc., because "That Just Works (tm)".

What I say is clearly duplication of effort and code - waste of time short 
term. On the other hand, we either get a suboptimal but working solution 
in t=tomorrow, or we wait for some magic "everyone uses this common 
protocol/file format/API/lib/mechanism" and have the first solution to 
offer in t=infinite. (I strongly believe users won't wait till 
t=infinite.)

I don't say anyone should do anything this or that way. I only say we, 
at pcb-rnd, do build those bridges. If anyone wants to join this 
decentralized effort, from schematics side, simulation side, 
autorouter side, "competing"/"alternative" PCB layout tool side, we 
welcome them.

Regards,

Igor2