Promoting symbols from Source_Symbols to digikey-symbols

Design Tools and Resources KiCad
1

Congratulations on the digikey-kicad-library - wonderful to see this proactive participation from our favourite distributor!

Being an atomic library, utility is somewhat unfairly tied to quantity. The library looks well on its way, but at 150 symbols in the recommended digikey-symbols folder, it may be more curiosity than cure-all. Meanwhile, the Source_Symbols folder has over 1000 symbols, which might just be enough to tip it over into a big deal.

What is the process you use for promoting symbols from Source_Symbols to digikey-symbols? Is there some sort of vetting process before they’re considered ready for general use? What caveats would you point out before considering looking in the Source_Symbols directory?

2

Hey @liteyear, I think one nice thing to clairify is that each symbol is kept in it’s own symbol library in the src folder to make it easier to manage and parallelize work on the library using multiple contributors. Libraies contained in the digi-key symbols folder includes all those symbols in the source folder, but organizes all of them into libraries which correspond to where they live in Digi-Key’s taxonomy on the website. For example, the barrel audio connectors library has 5 parts in it.

EESchema-DOCLIB  Version 2.0
#
$CMP SJ-3523-SMT-TR
D CONN JACK STEREO 3.5MM SMD R/A
K CP-3523SJCT-ND SJ
F https://www.cui.com/product/resource/digikeypdf/sj-352x-smt_series.pdf
$ENDCMP
#
$CMP SJ1-2503A
D CONN JACK STEREO 2.5MM R/A
K CP1-2503A-ND 
F https://www.cui.com/product/resource/digikeypdf/sj1-2503a.pdf
$ENDCMP
#
$CMP SJ1-3523N
D CONN JACK STEREO 3.5MM R/A
K CP1-3523N-ND SJ1
F https://www.cui.com/product/resource/digikeypdf/sj1-352xn_series.pdf
$ENDCMP
#
$CMP SN49B12B
D CONN JACK STEREO 6.35MM R/A
K SC1522-ND SN49B
F http://www.switchcraft.com/Drawings/SN49B_SERIES_CD.pdf
$ENDCMP
#
$CMP RA49B14B
D CONN JACK STEREO 6.35MM R/A
K SC2030-ND RA Jax�
F http://www.switchcraft.com/Drawings/ra49b_Series_cd.pdf
$ENDCMP
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#End Doc Library

I’m currently working on updated some of our processes around the library. Many of the original contributors internally have moved around in the org with different responsibilities so we’re working on expanding with some of the newer interesting part releases.

3

G’day Ben,

Yes, that makes perfect sense.

I see now I simply read the wrong number off my screen! I thought there were only about 150 symbols in digikey-symbols, but there are indeed 1073, spread across 150 libraries, so every symbol in Source_Symbols is accounted for.

Thank you for the clarification and apologies for the false accusation!