Eagle automation
================

These Python scripts make open hardware development a bit more convenient
if you are using the CadSoft Eagle package and are used to the development
procedures open source software projects usually follow.

eaglediff   - commandline visual diff tool for schematics and board layouts
              that is compatible with git-difftool.

eagleexport - tool that exposes a unified commandline interface to various
              different ways Eagle offers for exporting artwork.

eagledrl    - generate .drl files from .dri without any annoying dialogs.



Installation
============

Run:

$ python setup.py install
$ git config --global --add difftool.eaglediff.cmd 'eaglediff $LOCAL $REMOTE'

Note these scripts have only been tested using Eagle 5.11.0.



Usage
=====

You can find a Makefile in the skel/ subdirectory that shows how you can
automatically build your project's documentation using make from .sch and
.brd files.

To show differences to the design that have not yet been committed:

$ git difftool -t eaglediff

To show differences between two tagged versions:

$ git difftool -t eaglediff v1.0..v2.0

Note that Eagle windows will blink on and off during the use of these
tools. Try not to touch anything while they are doing that. 

Also, Eagle sometimes behaves weirdly if more than one instance of it is
running: it might occasionally stop in the middle of a script or throw a
random error dialog. Because of the closed nature of this software there is
nothing that can be done about that. If that bothers you, consider
switching to a free EDA tool.



Known problems
==============

When exporting to PDF using eagleexport, default print settings are used.
To set them, go to File -> Print setup, make changes, then quit Eagle so
that the settings are saved.

Exporting and diffing multi-page schematics doesn't work well - only the
one page is used.



Hacking
=======

These tools work with physical layers (for instance, the artwork that will
actually be etched into copper). One physical layer can consist of one or
more logical Eagle layers. E.g. "topcopper" includes "Top, Pads, Vias"
Eagle layers. 

The mapping between physical layers and logical Eagle layers and other
tweakable settings are in eagle_automation/config.py.

The settings should work for most simple one- or two-layer boards. In the
future there will be a way to set these on a per-project basis.



License
=======

Eagle automation, set of commandline tools for use with CadSoft Eagle
Copyright (C) 2012  Tomaz Solc <[email protected]>

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.