Release notes for the gEDA/gaf 20050820 snapshot

general
• This snapshot is primarily a bug fix release. Most of the squashed bugs are critical fixes for various segmentation faults and also some usability improvements. There are also a few new features including the ability to change attribute visibility in gattrib, improved grid spacing in gschem, postscript output for pictures in schematics, an updated version of gsch2pcb (which fixes many issues), a new refdes numbering script (grenum), gnetlist spice backend improvements, and an updated convert_sym.

libgeda

• Shared library version number now at 24.
• Carlos added postscript support to print embedded pictures.
• Fixed several build related issues when gcc 4.0 came along.
• Applied a patch by Carlos Azevedo which expands the path of rc files so that they can be found in hopefully all circumstances.
• Added grid-mode and grid-spacing rc keyword infrastructure support.

gschem

• Fixed a long standing bug most visible in Mac OSX which prevent schematics from being displayed correctly.
• Dan added the '-p' flag to gschem which automatically places the main gschem window and the gschem log window at startup time rather than letting the window manager figure out what to do.
• Added grid-mode and grid-fixed-threshold. grid-mode lets you specify "variable" (which is the current behavior) or "fixed" which is the new mode. "fixed" grid mode causes the grid to be drawn with predetermined (i.e. fixed) spacing. grid-fixed-threshold specifies the minimum number of pixels needed for the grid to be displayed.
• Fixed a long standing bug where if you disabled the scrollbars and then scrolled via the scroll wheel, gschem will crash. Unfortunately due to implementation details, you must enable scrollbars to use the scroll wheel.
• Applied Matthias Wenzel's color and usability patch. Now the color selector dropdown is set to the first selected object and appears on the Edit/Text Edit... dialog box.
• Updated the Italian translation by Petrecca Michele.

gnetlist

• Stuart modified the spice-sdb backend so that .include doesn't embed the included file's contents in the SPICE netlist by default.
• Along the above lines, Stuart added new -e command line flag which forces embedding of .include file's contents into SPICE netlist.
• Stuart also changed order of writing out netlist and .model/.subckt cards to facilitate use of numparam with ngspice.
• Updated Bill Wilson's gnetlist gsch2pcb backend to version 1.5.
• Applied patch by Carlos Azevedo which moves the chdir after traversing the schematics, since that might change the current directory.
• Applied patch by Carlos Azevedo which re-implements the rename structures to be completely dynamic.
• Dan fixed up the configure.ac script and gsch2pcb to search for the m4 program at configure time. This search path can be control with the --with-pcbm4dir and --with-pcbconfdir command line flags to ./configure. The found path can also be changed at runtime with the gsch2pcb project file.

gattrib

• Carlos fixed segmentation fault because lacking of "default_border" and "default_ouside_border" properties.
• Stuart made some changes to enable setting attribute visibility from within gattrib.

gsymcheck

• No other significant changes except a bunch of code cleanup and updating.

symbols

• Dan and Werner both made some tweaks to existing symbols, otherwise no major changes.

geda (gManager)

• Added updated Italian translation by Petrecca Michele.
• Werner added and updated the German translation.
• Fixed a nasty crash where if files were not in the expected directory.

utils

• Carlos changes the way tragesym draws symbols so that they no longer need to be translated to the origin.
• Updated gsch2pcb to Bill Wilson's latest version (v1.5).
• Stuart integrated Levente Kovacs' grenum script. grenum is an advanced refdes renumber utility.
• Integrated Jeff McLamb changes to convert_sym which is a ViewDraw symbol/schematic converter. Changes include:
  • Updated to support gEDA file format version 1
  • Added capability to import more graphic styles from ViewDraw
  • Mapped ViewDraw "SIGNAL" attribute to gEDA "net" attribute
  • Mapped ViewDraw "HETERO" attribute to a new "split" attribute
  • Mapped ViewDraw "PINTYPE" attributes to correct gEDA pintypes
  • Fixed a few old bugs

docs

• Bill Wilson's gsch2pcb tutorial was updated to the latest web version.
• No other significant changes.

examples

• No significant changes.

For more a detailed changes, please look in the appropriate ChangeLogs in the source tarballs.

Notes/Bugs/Errata/Known Issues/Last Minute Issues

• I am still behind on applying patches and integrating contributed symbols. However, I am pleased to say that my mbox is slowly shrinking. :)
• Many thanks to everybody involved in this release. Thanks.
• As usual, send all bug reports and suggestions to the geda-dev or geda-user mailing lists. Thanks.

Download

• http://www.geda.seul.org/download.html (USA)
• http://ftp.sunet.se/geda/download.html (Europe)

Source Tarballs

md5sum	Name	Size
86f6612a1c1ff502bebddce24c40bcb0	Makefile	32 KB
e8d903d84515cc518e545b6f2e3d7a9d	geda-20050820.tar.gz	392 KB
089d0f680cf4f1279a73d895f3e08ffd	geda-docs-20050820.tar.gz	2804 KB
8588c76319bd03514a52a48db95ac4df	geda-examples-20050820.tar.gz	240 KB
6ff8e6343b621199dde7fcd9a7ff264a	geda-gattrib-20050820.tar.gz	312 KB
94f2a666701e06438fda0a9ce00e5ae3	geda-gnetlist-20050820.tar.gz	316 KB
8ac2387999ec98016c3b004c95fab424	geda-gschem-20050820.tar.gz	1560 KB
c339abc4956987852b948c44118b2e2f	geda-gsymcheck-20050820.tar.gz	132 KB
a05c9bb11a31c246be3c9a799685bb0e	geda-symbols-20050820.tar.gz	648 KB
6555466492f3273dbefb772bd4ffd486	geda-utils-20050820.tar.gz	256 KB
356182f379af726045a70de3024c7e6d	libgeda-20050820.tar.gz	1004 KB
Total Size:		~7704 KB

Required Libraries/Programs

Most can be found at: http://www.geda.seul.org/dist

Required libraries:

• gtk+ ≥ 2.2.x (tested with 2.6.x).
  NOTE: gtk+ 1.2.x is no longer supported.
• guile ≥ 1.6.3 (tested with 1.6.7).
  NOTE: guile 1.4.x is no longer supported.

Required programs:

• pkg-config ≥ 0.15.0
  NOTE: You MUST install pkg-config regardless of gtk+ version.

Optional libraries:

• LibStroke ≥ 0.5.1
• libgdgeda ≥ 2.0.15
  NOTE: You MUST install 2.0.15, 2.0.9 and earlier versions will not work.
• zlib ≥ 1.1.x
• libpng ≥ 1.2.x

Packages/Binaries/Installers

• Debian packages for unstable can be found here or using apt-get.
• RPM packages for Fedora Core 4 can be found here.
• An updated gEDA Suite CD is currently being tested and will be uploaded soon.

Building/Installing/Running

There are several ways of building gEDA/gaf:

1. Download *all* the above files and the required libraries.
2. Build and install the required and optional libraries.
3. Untar all of the geda tar files in the same directory.
4. Set the prefix= variable in the Makefile
5. Run: make and set the specified variables (PATH, LD_LIBRARY_PATH, and PKG_CONFIG_PATH)
6. Run: make install
   This should complete with NO errors.
7. Run: gschem and select Help/Manual... for all available documentation.

   Before you run gschem, gnetlist, gattrib, or gsymcheck you will need to set those three environment variables, or add them to a shell startup file (.bashrc, or .bash_profile or .profile)

-OR-

1. Download all the above files and the required libraries.
2. Set the specified variables (PATH, LD_LIBRARY_PATH, and PKG_CONFIG_PATH) correctly to the place where you are installing everything.
3. Build and install the required and optional libraries.
4. Untar all of the geda tar files in the same directory.
5. Go into each directory and run:
   ./configure [ with --prefix=$HOME/geda if you wish ]
   make install

   You must build and install the packages in the following order:

   1. libgeda
   2. symbols
   3. gschem
   4. gnetlist
   5. gsymcheck
   6. gattrib
   7. geda
   8. utils
   9. docs
   10. examples