File Locking Fix on Mac Eagle 7.5.0

Hi Lisa,

Good job finding a work around to this issue. I didn't have the patience to

keep digging to work this out, I just turned off the feature and ignored

any remaining spurious whinges from Eagle!

lisa fredrickson wrote on Fri, 25 December 2015 00:14

I'm wondering if the fix could be as simple as requiring the user to

open his schematics and boards through the Eagle console while in an an

open project, and defeating the user's ability to open the schematic or

board directly by clicking on it in the OS X Finder and thereby bypassing

opening the project.

Personally I really wouldn't want this to be the fix as this just forces

people to use Eagle in a particular way. I rarely use projects, they don't

add anything of benefit to me and I would find being forced to use them

quite annoying. Enforced use of projects is at best a work around in my

opinion.

lisa fredrickson wrote on Fri, 25 December 2015 00:14

Perhaps the schematic and board's System Open File With... Attribute

could be set to an auxiliary program that instead of opening it , tells

the user to open it using Eagle in an open project to not disturb the

lock mechanism.

The correct way to fix this is to fix the bugs in the implementation so

that it works as expected. I think they should possibly ask a varied group

of users how they would like such a feature to work though first as it

seems to me that somebody in CADSoft dreamed up this feature without fully

considering its impacts on end users....

Rachael

--

Web access to CadSoft support forums at www.eaglecentral.ca.  Where the CadSoft EAGLE community meets.

I have been working with Eagle 7.5.0 a lot recently, and have found a

number of bugs and

work arounds.

Unfortunately, Eagle starts up differently and invokes different options

depending

on whether you start the Eagle application (1) from its installation

directory, (2) from the <project.epf>

"EPF" file or (3) from the schematic or board file.  I have found that I

can keep the "delete lock" demon

away by religiously starting Eagle from the Applications folder, then

opening the project, then opening

the schematic or board, and backing out in the same way.  If I go off and

do something else, like

start Eagle, edit a CAM file, and quit Eagle. the locking demon for my

project sometimes returns.

I can get rid of it again  by religiously starting Eagle from the

Applications folder, then opening the

project, then opening the schematic or board, deleting the lock, checking

that ERC reports the schematic and

board are still consistent, and backing out, saving in the same way. Once

the demon is gone,

if I stick to my religious opening, it doesn't come back.

In my opinion, Eagle violates standard Mac protocol by failing to ask if

you want to overwrite existing

files.  For example, with the CAM processor, if you tell it to process the

job and there are existing

CAM files already there, it silently overwrites them without asking if you

want to replace them.

In the same manner, Eagle is silently overwriting a number of preference

files, including the

project EPF file and other global preference files, without letting you

know what is changing and

if you really want to replace your existing preferences.  When you open

your schematic or board

directly, it is unclear how many of the preference settings are being

updated.

In addition, the Auto-Router window is especially buggy.

1. If you turn off Auto-grid and set the grid number too low (e.g. 0.01 mm)

the router starts but

starts spitting up error messages and may crash.

2. If you partially auto-route your board, and then make some change on the

board and go back

to auto-route, BEWARE of allowing the job to go with its default setting

of  "continue".  Eagle starts

spitting up error messages and crashes if you don't quit right away. You

have to manually turn off the

continue option.

3. If you start an auto-route job, there is a delay for the window to

update.  If you accidentally double-click

when starting the job, or click again during the delay, the auto-router

window may disappear and Eagle

goes Zombie, continuing to route but without a controlling router window.

If you try to use the standard

Eagle menus, they are all greyed out  and nothing responds.  Apple's

Force-Quit doesn't even work!

The work-around is to start Apple's Activity Monitor, find Eagle in the

list of running applications, click on

Eagle and click on Quit (as opposed to Force-Quit).   Suddenly, Eagle comes

back to life with an Error Message

concerning Not being able to issue commands from the missing window, but

then you say OK and Eagle

is responding normally again.

Hope this helps.

Lisa

On 12/24/2015 7:14 PM, lisa fredrickson wrote:

Hi Jorge,

 

I think I fixed the file locking problem on my Mac running Yosemite OS X

and Eagle 7.5.0.

I posted about it online earlier.

 

I'm wondering if the fix could be as simple as requiring the user to

open his schematics and

boards through the Eagle console while in an an open project, and

defeating the user's ability

to open the schematic or board directly by clicking on it in the OS X

Finder and thereby

bypassing opening the project.

 

Perhaps the schematic and board's System Open File With... Attribute

could be set to an

auxiliary program that instead of opening it , tells the user to open it

using Eagle in an open

project to not disturb the lock mechanism.

 

Could you check my post and see if there's a simpler solution in there?

 

Lisa

 

--

To view any images and attachments in this post, visit:

http://www.element14.com/community/message/170103

 

Hi Lisa,

There were a number of file-locking issues reported for the Mac

platform. These have been addressed in our latest beta 7.5.1, if you

could try it out and let me know if everything working that would be

very helpful.

Any feedback on the file-locking or any other feature of EAGLE is always

welcome.

Best Regards,

Jorge Garcia

Where should I download it from?  I noticed that Newark is now offering

it as a limited trial download on their website, but I am using the

freeware

version from the Cadsoft website.

I noticed another bug leftover from installation.  I had Eagle 6.4

installed on

my machine then installed 7.5.0.  I would create a new project in Eagle

7.5.0.

However, if I later started Eagle by clicking on the eagle.epf in the

project folder,

it started the earlier version of Eagle instead of the current version, and

I could

even end up with two versions running at the same time.  When you quit from

the wrong

version, it gives an error message about over-writnig the eagle.epf from

another version

of Eagle.

On Mon, Dec 28, 2015 at 10:51 AM, lisa fredrickson <

On 12/28/2015 1:51 PM, lisa fredrickson wrote:

Where should I download it from?

www.cadsoftusa.com > Downloads > Betatest

On 12/28/2015 1:57 PM, lisa fredrickson wrote:

I noticed another bug leftover from installation.  I had Eagle 6.4

installed on

my machine then installed 7.5.0.  I would create a new project in Eagle

7.5.0.

However, if I later started Eagle by clicking on the eagle.epf in the

project folder,

it started the earlier version of Eagle instead of the current version,

and

I could

even end up with two versions running at the same time.  When you quit

from

the wrong

version, it gives an error message about over-writnig the eagle.epf from

another version

of Eagle.

Hello Lisa,

This is probably not a bug but actually the intended behaviour. The .epf

file stores all of the info about the last time the designed was opened,

version of EAGLE, window positions, libraries in use, etc. If the last

time that design was opened it was opened with 6.4 then the eagle.epf

file would likely call for 6.4 to open it.

Personally, I usually just open EAGLE and then from there open whatever

I want to work on. When you have multiple versions of EAGLE installed

this is usually easier than relying on the OS to figure out which

version of EAGLE to call.

hth,

Jorge Garcia

If I save a file with Eagle 7.5.0, and quit Eagle, and later click on the file to open it,

I expect Eagle 7.5.0 to open it, not an earlier version of Eagle.

On 12/28/2015 8:00 PM, lisa fredrickson wrote:

If I save a file with Eagle 7.5.0, and quit Eagle, and later click on

the file to open it,

I expect Eagle 7.5.0 to open it, not an earlier version of Eagle.

Hi Lisa,

Thank you for the clarification, ignore my earlier reply. I know how to

do this in Windows but Im not quite sure how to do it on the Mac.

Hopefully someone can chime in.

In Windows there's a setting in the Control Panel which controls which

programs are assigned to which file extension. If eagle is associated

with .sch Windows will call the executable that was installed at the

time of setting up the association. It's not aware of any newer versions

of the program.

I think something similar is going on under the Mac OS.

Let me know if there's anything else I can do for you.

Best Regards,

Jorge Garcia

On the Mac, you change file association as follows:

1. a. click on file, invoke File -> Get Info or b. right-click on file, ->

Get Info

2. the current (attempted) file association is shown in the Get Info dialog

3. unlock the lock at the bottom of the Get Info dialog (requires admin or

owner password)

4. change the file association in the Get Info dialog

5. if it won't change it:

a. Check that the new association application is an allowed source in

Applications -> System Preferences -> Security and Privacy

b. If not, Allow from Anywhere

c. change the file association in the Get Info dialog

6. Lock the lock at the bottom of the Get Info dialog

7. Go back to Applications -> System Preferences -> Security and Privacy

and allow sources from identified developers only