gEDA

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gEDA
Schematic capture using gschem
Design by	Ales Hvezda et al.
Latest release	1.4.0 / 27 January 2008
OS	Unix-like
Genre	Electronic design automation
License	GNU General Public License
Website	http://www.geda.seul.org/

gEDA is a suite of collaborative software used for electronic design automation. The project's name stands for GPL’d suite of electronic design automation tools.

Released under the terms of the GNU General Public License, gEDA is free software.

1 Description
2 History
3 Windows
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Description

The gEDA project offers a mature suite of free software applications for electronics design, including schematic capture [using "gschem", attribute management ["gattrib"], bill of materials (BOM) generation, netlisting into over 20 netlist formats ["gnetlist"], analog and digital simulation ["ngspice", "gnucap", "Icarus Verilog", and "GTKWave"], and Printed circuit board (PCB) layout ["pcb"]."

[edit] History

The gEDA project was started by Ales Hvezda in an effort to address the lack of free software EDA tools for Linux/UNIX, and the first version was released on 1 April 1998. The tools are developed primarily on Linux machines, although an effort is made to ensure that gEDA runs on other Unix-like systems.

Properly, the term gEDA refers to all free-software projects and applications that have voluntarily associated themselves with the gEDA project (via the geda-dev/geda-user mailing lists). In contrast, gEDA/gaf refers to a smaller subset of tools “grouped together under the gEDA name” and maintained directly by the gEDA project. These tools include:^[1]

gschem — A schematic capture program
gnetlist — A netlist generation program
gsymcheck — A syntax checker for schematic symbols
gattrib — A spreadsheet programm that manipulates the properties of symbols of a schematic
libgeda — Libraries for gschem, gnetlist, and gsymcheck
gsch2pcb — Forward annotation from schematic to layout using pcb
Assorted utility programs

Finally, the term gEDA suite refers to a packaged distribution of gEDA/gaf and other gEDA Project tools made available as an ISO CD-ROM image in order to simplify and automate the installation of the more commonly used gEDA Project tools.

[edit] Windows

A knowledgeable computer user can use the available source code (and available GPL'd libraries) to build gEDA to run under Microsoft Windows.^[2]^[3]

At points in time, individuals have even created Windows-compatible binaries for distribution. Whether those developers lose interest in that effort or they become overwhelmed by unsophisticated Windows users who require more hand-holding^[4] than the typical user running gEDA under a Unix-like OS, those Windows-compatible binaries have historically not been updated to include the latest improvements to the elements of the suite.