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pcb-rnd motivation

Phase 5: new data model (2018)

Mid 2018 the data model rewrite has mostly finished. The new model is capable of handling complex layer stackups, subcircuits, padstacks, slots. We are building a few long demanded features on top of the new infrastructure.

Phase 4: expansion, data model rewrite (2017)

Late 2016 and during 2017 there was a major expansion in number of developers, users and the amount of time spent on pcb-rnd. Our community is not tiny any more, and is very active: there is a lot of on-topic discussion going on on IRC every day, which result in bugs fixed and features implemented. Newcomers are intergated fast.

We started to rewrite the data model by slowly replacing elements with more generic subcircuits.

Phase 3: community requested features (2016)

Overlapping phase 2 there was feature poll . If there are enough active users/testers for a feature, it gets implemented in phase 3.

There is a small, active, constructive community forming around pcb-rnd. Future directions will be mainly set by their need.

Phase 2: major cleanups (2015..2016)

In the first phase I was mostly implementing a set of small features and fixes. As I got more familiar with the code base, I decided to bite the bullet and do some refactoring:

Plans for the future includes:

Phase 1: At the beginning... (2013..2014)

I use PCB a lot on various computers. I used to try to join the mainstream development with small contribution (minor patches) and was active on IRC and the mailing lists for a while. However, it didn't work out well, and: I was pondering a fork for years. The trigger was that one day I've upgraded Debian on my lab computer and the new version of PCB came with gl enabled; this made PCB absolutely unusable (had to wait like 10 seconds for a scroll) while all the transparent polys over traces made the whole screen a mess. I should have recompiled everything and built a new Debian package with gl disabled or install from source (but I have too many computers for that). My decision was to set up my own .deb but then build it from a fork (it's not much of an extra effort), so I can add some of the features I miss in daily use. My plans with this fork:

Footnotes: