On Thursday 07 February 2008, Newell Jensen wrote: > So would you be the main "overseer" for the Project Manager > or only if it dealt in some way with xgsch2pcb?
As Peter said, that is between you and all of us. > Who would be > the main design architect for this You!!! To do it right, it is a very difficult project. Several others have tried and failed. What is needed is a framework that can be expanded as the system grows. If you design it around the tools we have now, it will fail. We need it designed around the "vapor" tools we don't have yet, and what is in the works and not released yet. It's not just schematic and board layout! We have simulation, both analog and digital. On the fringes, there are people working on synthesis, electromagnetic simulation of boards, static timing analysis. Another step away there are a bunch of tools that are not really gEDA but are available now as free/open-source. A good project manager will accomodate all this. I think it means you need to start from scratch. > and has anyone come up > with a design for how they want the work flow to be > abstracted? No. > If not, was the student supposed to come up with > this? Yes. We will help you, or at least try. There has been some debate about it, but no decisions. The decisions are made by the person doing the work. The rest of us can express an opinion, but the real decision is yours. > I am willing to start looking at the source of the > different projects and seeing how to interface them but if > someone has already done a lot of the brain work on this > already and /or there is a set preference among the gEDA user > base to have it a certain way, that would be useful > information. I think most people here agree that it must remain extremely flexible. Give users a choice of how to work, and what tools to use or not use. It should be able to really support the tools, not just a subset of the features. Then think of what it would take to make it suitable for undergraduates. The best architecture would be one that allows others to make extensions. It is probably easiest if you use an interpreted language. Speed is not a factor, so there is no need for a compiled language. Writing in an interpreted language makes it easier to extend, and to distribute experimental modules. The only real requirement that might restrict your choice of language is licensing and portability. The whole set of tools, including compilers, etc. must be truly free, and easily available on multiple platforms. > The first main step is to figure out a design > that would be worth while with most of the kinks thought out. > Since this was already a proposed project for GSoC 2007 has > this part been worked on by anyone? Thanks. No, but even if it has, you have no obligation to use it. If you can come up with a design that can be extended to do all this, that will be more than anyone else has been able to do with this. That will be plenty for a summer. The extensions can come later. _______________________________________________ geda-dev mailing list [email protected] http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-dev
