How to handle modification of libraries in existing KiCad projects.

[rkujawa]

Due to recent changes in kicad-myparts, a few of my older projects required modifications too. These changes to kicad-myparts were clearly good and welcome, but at the same time, they are generating additional work. We should think about some strategy, how to handle relations between components in this library and existing projects.

I thought about this for a while and came up with a few solutions:

• Include a copy of kicad-myparts in each project? Clearly not a good solution...
• Introduce branches in the kicad-myparts, switch branches depending on a project? Sounds unnecessary and complex.
• Explore how submodules are handled in git? The kicad-myparts repository could be included as submodule in every KiCad project we have in Sakura-IT organisation. To be honest, I don't know much about submodules in git yet, but it seems that they are able to reference a remote repository at a given point in time. Which would be perfect for situation where a project is generally finished and we don't want to break it (and at the same time, we'd be free to make further changes to kicad-myparts). See: https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-Tools-Submodules .

Any other ideas are welcome.

[cahirwpz]

Firstly... sorry for introducing changes that need some extra work. I can rework schematics if you want. No worries - this will not be a waste of time. I'm not familiar with schematics editor in KiCAD yet, so that's going to be a good exercise.

Include a copy of kicad-myparts in each project? Clearly not a good solution...

If you rely on built-in KiCAD bug checking in schematics editor then you may consider following scenario. For some devices like microcontrollers or FPGAs pin function is assigned in firmware. When you create corresponding part in parts editor you assign a function to a pin as given in a datasheet. Clearly for each project real pin's function (e.g. input / output) will be different from the original (e.g. tri-state).

So it seems that for some components it makes sense to copy them to project's library.

The kicad-myparts repository could be included as submodule in every KiCad project we have in Sakura-IT organisation.

That makes a lot of sense. Especially, as you mentioned, for projects that are considered to be finished. Moreover - by using submodules, when you clone the project locally, you get everything what's needed to view / edit it. I think I tried git's submodules at some point - they weren't difficult to familiarize with.