[Pkg-electronics-devel] KiCAD packaging bug

[nick at ndcode.org]

hi Team,

I've been dealing with a frustrating issue in my KiCAD simulations -- I 
had used some digital electronics relying on the Xspice extension to 
ngspice, but the simulation would not run. It turns out that the KiCAD 
version I'm using didn't include ngspice as a dependency, only 
libngspice0. See this:

Package: kicad
Version: 9.0.5+dfsg-1~bpo12+1
Priority: optional
Section: electronics
Maintainer: Debian Electronics Team 
<pkg-electronics-devel at alioth-lists.debian.net>
Installed-Size: 163 MB
Depends: libngspice0, ...

Because of that, critical files weren't installed on my system. At least 
the following files are needed for the Xspice simulations to work:

/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/ngspice/digital.cm
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/ngspice/xtraevt.cm
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/ngspice/table.cm
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/ngspice/spice2poly.cm
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/ngspice/xtradev.cm
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/ngspice/analog.cm
/usr/share/ngspice/scripts/spinit

Doing dpkg --listfiles ngspice I see that all of these files are 
installed by the ngspice package, not libngspice0. I suppose the issue 
could be partly addressed by making ngspice a "recommended" package, but 
given the error messages are extremely cryptic (and there are many other 
issues with getting a digital simulation to work, due to confusing and 
partially implemented features in the KiCAD simulator) it would be 
better to make it a hard dependency.

Another approach might be to ask ngspice packagers to move these files 
so they are always available when libngspice0 is available. But making 
ngspice a dependency would be a better approach in the short term.

Kind regards,
Nick