Vladimir, I think that the time has come to fork kicad. It cannot evolve under its current masters.
Looking at the code, the first thing that I did was change all members to private and used the compiler to force the use of proper accessor member functions throughout. This is necessary to do the least little thing with pcbnew. But it appears that the current "masters" do not like to program in C++: they make all members public and access them directly from everywhere. When you try to correct it, they complain that it might break something, when to an experienced C++ programmer it is seen as broken by design. Hummph. Even to a C programmer is poorly written. Then they make "coding standards" that specify which whitespace to put around their bad code. These things, coupled with an accute resistance to any change that isn't a bug fix, makes it impossible for any experienced C++ programmer to contribute more than one liners to this project. I experienced pretty much the same response as you did (but I didn't push as hard or even get commit access). Others have gone their own way in the past. It is a pity because it always seems to be pcbnew that is the breaking point for most. As it stands pcbnew lacks features that were in other free tools 20 years ago. Here is a short list of things that cannot be done without tearing out all the bad code in pcbnew: - change the internal unit - remove the limit on number of copper layers - add technical layers - properly support buried and blind vias - apply DFX rules - avoid round-off errors - change the internal autorouter (this one is strange as kicad was reportedly originally intended for autorouter experimentation). The list goes on. But, of course, the current "masters" will tell you that none of these things really needs to be changed, because they do not constitute a bug fix. --brian -- Brian F. G. Bidulock � The reasonable man adapts himself to the � [email protected] � world; the unreasonable one persists in � http://www.openss7.org/ � trying to adapt the world to himself. � � Therefore all progress depends on the � � unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw �
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