[FEATURE] Option to apply a variant to be used by the preflights

[jnavila]

Fill as much as you can, remove the rest

Describe the bug
When using variants for alternative population of functions, some output pins of alternative functions are tagged in contention error by ERC , but that would not happen for each variant.

To Reproduce
Create a schematic with 2 op-amps whose output are linked. Create variants which eliminates one of them. Enable erc in Kibot → you get an erc error.

Expected behavior
The erc should be performed for each variant, once each schematic has been processed. Reports of ERC errors should be per-variant.

Environment (please complete the following information):
Where are you running KiBot:

• Using a docker image? kicad5_auto:1.2.0
• Using a desktop system? Windows 11 and Linux ubuntu 22.04

[set-soft]

Hi @jnavila !
I understand your problem, but is not that simple.
The preflight section, as its name says, is run before the outputs. So no variants are applied.
If you really need to run the ERC after variants I'll suggest doing this:

1. Apply the variant to the schematic using sch_variant output
2. In a separated run check the ERC of the generated schematic

You must understand that a config file could contain more than one variant, without a new option is impossible to determine the exact thing you want. To make things worst: changing the behavior is not a good idea.

BTW: I was thinking about some mechanism to create the SCH/PCBs for the variants and then apply the operations, so we don't generate them over and over, but some small details forces to generate them anyways. But could help with this.

[jnavila]

Hi,

My config files contain several variants, that's the pain point, and obviously, my request does not fall into the preflight checks, but more on variant management. I don't think that the behavior needs to be changed, but more that an additional command be created once a variant has been instanciated.

Your last remark is very interesting. I usually generate multiple outputs for a given variant, and the types of outputs are the same across variants. Right now, I managed to prevent copy-paste by using yaml references, but this feels a bit odd because I would expect this feature to be described in the kibot language, not by a the yaml level workaround. Anyway, let me know how the enhancement goes.

Edit: fixed some typos.

[set-soft]

Hi @jnavila !
Don't use copy & paste!
Try doing what I told you:

1. Create one config file with all your variants/filter, preflights and outputs. But just one output for all the variants, lets say: just one BoM output.
2. Include an sch_variant and pcb_variant, but with the run_by_default disabled.
3. Run KiBot once for each variant asking to generate the variants.
4. Run KiBot once for each variant asking to generate the outputs, passing the variant files.

You'll avoid repetition in the config file and get the preflights