[Pkg-electronics-devel] PCB

[pcb-rnd at igor2.repo.hu]

On Thu, 15 Dec 2016, Bdale Garbee wrote:

> Dima Kogan <dima at secretsauce.net> writes:

>> If upstream hasn't made a
>> release in years, and the pcb package fell out of testing, maybe the
>> fork is the way to go.
>
> I think it'd be great to have both in Debian for the next stable release
> cycle.

I agree. pcb-rnd is technically a fork, but by now is really a different 
layout package that historically shares some code with mainline and has a 
similar looking UI.

I have a script to do some crude stats using 'svn blame' and it says we 
have more than 48% difference since the fork (code-line-wise, indentation 
change and move-code-between-files noise already removed).

On a higher level: in some important aspects pcb-rnd goes in a totally 
different way than pcb (modularity, portability, scripting, code quality 
and development methods). That together with dozens of extra features 
makes me think having pcb in a distro doesn't make pcb-rnd unnecessary, 
because it's not just another variant of the same software.

About Stretch: for pcb-rnd it's more important to get any Debian support 
than getting into the next stable. Just getting into sid would already be 
a big step. The wiki says the "Soft" freeze for Stretch is in 3 weeks. I 
couldn't make any measurable progress with Debian coverage of pcb-rnd 
since August (4 months) - I don't expect Stretch to be a realistic target.

Regards,

Tibor Palinkas