Error-prone behaviour when footprint doesn't match active library

[Jeff Young]

Case 1:

Set an active library, do some work and then go to dinner.

Come back, work on the board layout a bit, and then cmd-E a footprint. Edit and save. No update on board. Do an Update Footprints. Still no update.

When you did the save, it was saved in whatever library was active from before, not the one it came from.

Case 2:

Open Kicad and edit a board in pcbnew.

Cmd-E a footprint. Edit it. Save. Nothing happens. Save is greyed out. Why? (Because there's no active library, but there's no way to find that out.)

Case 3:

Say you do actually want to copy a footprint to another library. We only support saving it to a *new* library directly. You can copy it by setting the active library to the destination library and then saving, but this isn't exactly easily-discoverable.

[Jeff Young (jeyjey)]

Setting to Medium because Case 1 tends to generate a lot of bug reports.

[Jeff Young (jeyjey)]

The fix to all of these is to get rid of the active library concept, but that will have to wait for 6.0.

For 5.0, this patch implements a Save dialog with a library selector. The library selector is initialised to the footprint's library (if specified, otherwise the active library). The user can leave it, or choose a different library.

[Wayne Stambaugh (stambaughw)]

Patch merged. Thanks!

On 02/21/2018 07:21 PM, Jeff Young wrote:
> The fix to all of these is to get rid of the active library concept, but
> that will have to wait for 6.0.
>
> For 5.0, this patch implements a Save dialog with a library selector.
> The library selector is initialised to the footprint's library (if
> specified, otherwise the active library). The user can leave it, or
> choose a different library.
>
>
> ** Patch added: "0006-Remove-confusing-active-library-interactions-with-sa.patch"
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/kicad/+bug/1750918/+attachment/5060018/+files/0006-Remove-confusing-active-library-interactions-with-sa.patch
>

[KiCad Janitor (kicad-janitor)]

Fixed in revision e552c2fbff08be4f73b866ad335de53929459c5f
https://git.launchpad.net/kicad/patch/?id=e552c2fbff08be4f73b866ad335de53929459c5f