Re: gEDA-dev: File format version change...

[Peter Clifton <pcjc2-at-NOSPAMcam_dot_ac_dot_uk>]

On Mon, 2008-11-10 at 11:58 +0000, Peter Clifton wrote:

> "What were g[sym|sch]update used for in the past, and are they ever
> likely to be relevant again?"

Having decided not to be completely lazy, I skimmed the source-code for
the utilities. They are almost certainly not relevant any more, and our
old trigger for displaying that message is not necessarily optimal.. 

The programs have these comments:

# Right now this program should only be run against schematics which are 
# either version 20020527 or earlier.

# Right now this program should only be run against symbols which are 
# either version 20020527 or earlier.


Whilst I appreciate that these themselves might be out of date, I guess
I need to fix the test in libgeda to warn only if the file's version is
"0", and its date-version is <=20020527.

I've inferred the reason these utilities exist, is that before a certain
version of gnetlist, different attributes have different meanings - and
the utilities convert them. label= instead of netname=, for example.
Running these utilities on a currently working schematic could cause
nasty (I for example, use "label=..." quite a lot for annotations).

Ales, is my interpretation of these utilities right - is there any other
history behind them?


Since we still have code to read formats this old, I'd probably not be
super keen to remove the test / log message completely, although the
thought did cross my mind. (There are various other things in "utils"
which look like they ought to be de-cluttered with a git rm command.)


Best wishes,

-- 
Peter Clifton

Electrical Engineering Division,
Engineering Department,
University of Cambridge,
9, JJ Thomson Avenue,
Cambridge
CB3 0FA

Tel: +44 (0)7729 980173 - (No signal in the lab!)



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