Multi-line directive bug

Seemed like my post here got overlooked, so I’m making a new thread for it:

Just wanted to make sure this gets taken care of, assuming I didn’t make a mistake and it’s a real problem. Please, someone, check my work if you can.

I believe a fix for this issue has been made, I guess it will appear in the next release whenever that is.

Thanks, @bobc. I guess I’m just confused how patches work since there have been 3 releases since this bug has been put in “Fix Released” status. Do they cherry pick which bugs get put in the main releases, so we just have to wait until this one gets picked?

I don’t use simulation so I don’t know which bug this is, but in general not all bug fixes go to minor bugfix releases.

Basically there are five possibilites to get bugfixes:

A. Stable versions if the fix goes to the stable (ATM 5.1) branch.
A.1 Testing builds which are updated daily.
A.2 Minor version releases (the next will be 5.1.6) which are released depending on the situation, maybe within 0…6 months.
B. Unstable developement versions leading to the next major release.
B.1 Nightly builds (ATM 5.99) which are updated daily. May be highly unstable.
B.2 The next major release (will be 6.0.0). You may have to wait 1 or 2 years.
C. Compile yourself a version which has the fix. It’s still either in stable or unstable branch so there’s no benefit over nightly builds.

If you see the bug in the issue database you can see also the milestone. If it’s 6.0 and the fix is released it means that it won’t (probably) be ported to the stable 5.1 series but the fix is available in the unstable nightly builds and later in 6.0.

If the milestone is 5.1.x and the fix is released it will be available in the testing builds and later in 5.1.x release.

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Ah, gotcha. Thanks, @eelik.

What does it mean if the Milestone is blank? I’m assuming this has something to do with the importance being set as “undecided”???

Milestones are set manually, so it’s just forgotten (or they didn’t use them so much back then). You can add a comment in the corresponding gitlab report: https://gitlab.com/kicad/code/kicad/issues/509. But it seems to be so old that it should be in all versions already. Are you sure you are seeing the same bug? It’s also OK to file a new bug report if the same old bug appears again after it has been fixed for some time.

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Ah, good point. It might be a similar bug, but not exactly the same. I’ll experiment with a few things to clarify that aspect, first. Thanks for the guidance!

The bug cited in https://gitlab.com/kicad/code/kicad/issues/509 has been fixed long time ago. It is exactly about what the title says: The fix allows to add the coupling constant for coupled inductors. The fix is available in recent KiCad 5.1.5.

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Correct, but I thought the fix affected all multi-line directives and not just that one specific situation. So my bad on that. Regardless, the whole purpose of this thread was to point out what I highlighted via the linked post in my screenshots. It somehow got derailed into talking about that one bug report instead.

I guess we would need a new fix to support parsing “.subckt” directives into the SPICE netlist? Is there a way to make a universal fix instead of adding these in one at a time?

Nevermind. I forgot I brought up this exact problem last year and it wasn’t deemed enough of a problem to be addressed. Sorry to waste everyone’s time again. I guess I assumed that one bug report referenced above was made to solve the entire multi-line problem instead of one specific case, but it was a bad assumption. Anyway, I did learn a bunch about Milestones and stuff, so it wasn’t all for nothing.

You might have a look at the recent commits to branch 5.1. at https://code.launchpad.net/~stambaughw/kicad/+git/kicad/+ref/5.1. There you will find an entry named “Recognize subckt blocks in spice”.

So you might have a look at the “testing” nightlies to check it out.

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Excellent. Thank you, @holger.

I suppose I could have been more specific, the fix I was referring to is:

It should be in nightly test builds, I don’t know if there is a 5.1.6 planned. I don’t recommend people use nightly builds except for testing.

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Dang. Oh, well. Glad it’s cleared up now.

Well, it’s not me, it is Seth who did the job!

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Haha. Right. I know. The whole point of the thread, though, was requesting the exact information you provided. Thanks!