[Ktechlab-devel] Current status (and of March)

[Zoltan Padrah]

   Hello everybody,

in this email I'd like to summarize the current situation in the  
development.

In my previous email to the list, I've started discussing the circuit,  
component and connector deletion problems. Now there is progress, as a  
deleted circuit will free all the references towards itself, so in this  
regards there will be no more crashes.
The way components and connectors are deleted still has to be defined.  
Now, if a connector is placed between 2 nodes belonging to different  
components, when one component is deleted, the connector will be also  
deleted. This can cause dangling pointers, so maybe the use of QPointer  
will be really needed. Another problem is related with the allocation of  
the objects: if the connector between two nodes is allocated on the stack  
(not in the heap), then deleting it will crash the program. This needs to  
be fixed.

During this week, some bugs have been also fixed, related to building the  
project. Has anybody tried to build the minimal_simulator branch?

Recently I've focused on the current source component. The almost trivial  
circuit, consisting of a resistor and current source currently is not  
simulated currently, because the ground is not assigned in the circuit,  
and due to this invalid/unsolvable equations appear in the simulator.
By looking at the code, it seems that Circuit::identifyGround() method is  
never called. Anybody has some idea how should the ground identification  
work?

Later I will focus on fixing the ground identification, and meanwhile I'm  
thinking of how to solve the component/connector deleting problem.

Also it would be really useful to start to integrate the minimal_simulator  
branch into the used interface, as now simple circuits (consisting of  
resistors and voltage sources) work. Also this way the problem of deleting  
components or connectors from the circuit can be better handled, because  
we will know what exactly is needed.

Regards,

   Zoltan