With the developer power available I don’t think it makes sense to start developing library manager. I don’t think anyone can really estimate required effort.
Besides I think that Git and Github are quite an amazing solution as a library database. The only downside I see and it was already mentioned is file oriented setup which limits speed when you have a lot of footprints. This could be improved if footprints would be stored in one file per library as currently the symbols are. So for V6 I would seriously consider if switching symbol library layout one file per symbol is warranted. Otherwise Git and Github already cover most of the use cases. This will be even more obvious with sane repository layout in V5. Additional benefits, which come with using git and have not been widely advertised are:
- pull request feature. This is a really great feature which I suspect that library maintainers are quite fond of. I don’t think the integration of new parts into the official library with proper inspection could be done any easier.
- The ability to merge personal library with official library. If you clone the official library, make a local branch from master and switch to it, you will still be able to integrate any recent changes to master made by other contributors into your own branch. This is phenomenal property which really has not been widely emphasized (I suspect it will become more obvious with V5 repository layout). Doing it this way makes it much easier to use personalized libraries along the official ones. For example I don’t really like having footprint name visible in Fab layer. I clone the official library, send a script through library which makes footprint names non-visible and commit changes to my local branch. If any changes happen to existing footprints anywhere else I can (or better git can) merge this changes automatically.
- Option to have multiple remote repositories. With git you can have multiple remote repositories. The official Kicad supported by Kicad library maintainers and an unofficial one, which could be open to anyone where people would be able to throw anything (as was already expressed in https://forum.kicad.info/t/ughh-the-current-libraries-are-a-mess/8026/29). Then it is up to individual user to choose from which repository he will merge to his local library. You can have additional repository which is available only within the department/company. And you have the same pull request feature to keep the department/company library under tight control (we are currently using this setup). We just need to show how this is done.
As for the size constraints I would package only symbols and footprints with the installer and keep 3D model available as a separate installer.
If the installers would have an option to select where to put the libraries and set the environment variables accordingly it would be even better.
What is really required is good documentation and a YouTube video or two to showcase how to:
- use offline libraries without any git integration (I think this has been mostly covered), and it would be quite simple to show with help of installers.
- simple git integration via one Git GUI tool (I’d recommend
git-guiwhich is already a part of Git suite and is available for all platforms). This would show git clone and git pull to refresh the repository and maybe even how to switch to older version. - advanced git integration showing advantages of local branches, merges from master and different remote repositories.