The conversion from v4 to v5 is very different from the conversion from v5 to v6.
Now we deal with a completely new format while v4 and v5 share the same format. So more caution is needed now. I must say in my case the conversion from v4 to v5 was flawless (or at least I have forgot any issue I mat had).
Understandable, I tend to be slightly OCD about my own libraries as well. Just a clarification question, when this change comes down the pipeline are you planning on manually redrawing each symbol from your personal library from scratch or you thinking about opening each symbol and then saving it, kind of what I described above. If it is the latter, then you are going to use a “converter” of sorts, albeit a very clumsy one.
If the process is similar to the one we underwent for the footprint conversion from v2013 (legacy) to v4 (pretty) it will be easier than you think.
I’m not really “thinking” anything. I’m describing the way it is right now in nightly builds and is going to be based on Wane’s description if nothing changes
Don’t know what I plan on doing - I should first get a bit of experience with a nightly to see it for myself. You are correct that a manual open/save is a clumsy converter and perhaps I do have to write a bit of code to either convert the libs myself or automate the open/save (with e.g. automator on the Mac). Manually redrawing everything is a waste of time and also error prone, so unlikely I will go that route.
Either way, I need a trustworthy process and am not sure which route and verification method(s) that will take yet. I have always liked the idea of a verification tool for symbols and footprints that would be capable of checking against the library standards and some sort of (I am very vague on this) symbol checker may be an opportunity to be included on this. Might just be a nice summer time intern job to get such tool started.
OK, Art.
I agree one symbol at a time is crazy. That’s the reason I think some automatic method should be found. I have a lot of personal libraries too.
I’d imagine that when V6 comes out there will be an option to do a batch conversion of symbols supplied by the KiCad team. Either as a standalone tool (makes more sense as this is a one time operation) or as a tool within KiCad suite. If not for users that at least for official KiCad library.
But I suspect that migrating the official library will be a bit of a catch 22 situation. Until there is a converter it will be tough to update symbols checking scripts. But these scripts would help catch issues with the converter.
Somebody transferred the whole official lib already and i really doubt they did it on a symbol by symbol basis. See https://github.com/KiCad/kicad-symbols/issues/2697
The beauty of KiCAD is everything is open. DIY. I have a script I used to use to convert mod to kicad_mod from command line (thankfully not needed so often anymore).
For what it’s worth, the dev team is aware that moving to the new symbol format is not as easy as it could be today, and we’re talking about possible solutions. It’s important to keep in mind that it may take a while for these solutions to appear, so please have patience. We are interested in the process of moving from V5 to V6 being as easy as possible by the time V6 is released, but in the meantime, those using nightly builds will have to understand that it takes time to build out these kinds of features.
I don’t have a problem with slow progress. However, with a change that profound you would think you would come up with those tools first, before you implement the change that affects everybody who is using nightlies. You don’t really have to merge unfinished solution. And if you want people to test it and provide feedback you need to do it in such a way so those people don’t become “nightly hostages”.
The point of getting the new format out early is to let people start playing with it to find any issues, and let developers start adding features that can’t be done (or can’t be done easily) in the old format.
Things like migration tools to make it easy to move libraries from V5 to V6 come later, when things are more stable.
This is not a good time to use nightlies for real work. We appreciate users who use nightlies to test things out, report bugs, etc. But, we have limited development resources, and we choose not to spend those resources on polishing every bit of a feature before it goes to a nightly: that is supposed to be the difference between nightlies and a stable release.
This is exactly what the KiCad development process is: we choose to sometimes merge unfinished things to nightlies, especially big things like an entirely new format, so that parts of those things can be tested while other parts are still in development.
Regarding “nightly hostages” – the way we have always recommended people test nightlies is to make copies of their data to test with: if you are working on a copy of your project and a copy of your libraries, you can always throw those copies away and go back to 5.1 to do “real” work with.
Be it as it may. With such philosophy you are going to have limited testing resources as well. People who are willing to use nighties don’t have very high level of expectations for things being “polished”. Just don’t bent us over the barrel of the gun and you won’t hear a single complain from us. All it takes is a little bit of thinking ahead.
I think your reaction here is a bit extreme. If you want to edit legacy symbol libs, use 5.1. If you want to convert your symbol libs to the new format, we’re going to make it faster to do that later.
You said in your original post “there is no plan to support import of your old libraries” – this is not true, that is our plan for how people will migrate to the new format.
That is fantastic news! I didn’t get that impression though from the responses I got on my bug report.
I think the conversation there got confused by people requesting the ability to save in the legacy format. What Wayne is saying is we aren’t going to make a way to save in the old format. We are going to make it easier and faster to update all your libraries to the new format, though.
I was going by the following statement:
The way I understood it that you use your old libraries for your old designs and make new libraries for the new ones. I’m glad I was wrong
You can continue using old libraries as read-only, or you can save them in the new format to be able to edit them. You can do a migration (open an old-format library, do a “save as” in the new format) and then you are free to add to that library.
What Wayne was saying here is that he didn’t want to assume that just by opening up an old library that someone wants it to be automatically converted to the new format.