PCBmodE version 3.0 released!

PCBmodE was publicly released in January 2013. I've created many boards with the software, but it remained somewhat of a personal project for various reasons. Recently I've decided to make a few improvements which quickly escalated to a full re-write of the software. The code is now more object-oriented, readable, organised, and so hopefully more attractive to contributors and users. Most importantly, however, the usage of the code is much more documentation-friendly. There aren't any new features, but adding them would be much easier with this code.

PCBmodE version 3.0 is hosted on Github, whereas older versions were hosted on Bitbucket. The main reason for the move was to see if this influences contributor engagement and exposure; this is where Github clearly wins over Bitbucket. A minor, but important, reason for the move was the lack of two-factor authentication on Bitbucket. There's no excuse for not having 2FA by now. It makes me feel like something is broken under the hood, or at least in the decision-making process at Atlassian. Otherwise I have no complaints for Bitbucket; it's a solid service that also offers free private repos, which is great.

Documentation was seriously lacking up to now and I always sympathised with the plight of those who really wanted to use PCBmodE but had no resources to work with. The documentation for version 3.0 is now done with the popular Sphinx+ReadTheDocs combo, and found here. It's not complete, but it's a start.

Boards made for older versions of PCBmodE will not compatible with version 3.0. There's now a separate repository for boards made for version 3.0 and older boards will be migrated as needed, if at all. A good stating design is the 'hello-solder' board.

Finally, I've changed the license from Apache to MIT. I felt that an MIT is more familiar to developers and more appropriate for the project. It shouldn't make much of a difference for most people.

Oh, new PCBmodE logo!

I really hope that PCBmodE will experience more users and develop a healthy and productive community around it. Please help where you can and send feedback my way.

Solder on!