BoardRipper v0.51.0

v0.51.0 — 2026-11-09

Several of the board changes in this release come from Roger Barbara and
Rogério Pires of 2R Tools (@reparomac), who
ship a customised BoardRipper inside their Scanner Diagnostic Suite and
published their changes under the AGPL in
reparomac/boardripper-2r. The
ideas below marked from 2R Tools were reviewed from that fork and
re-implemented here. Thank you, Roger, for the requests behind them and for
giving the work back.

Added

• Loose name search. The ribbon's Find part and Find net, the board
  sidebar's Search tab, the board highlight and the global search's board
  count ignore case and the separators _ - . /, and accept several words in
  any order: pp_1v25, 1v25 nand and 1v25nand all find
  PP1V25_AWAKE_NAND. Exact matches keep their place; names only the loose
  rule finds follow under Similar names. From 2R Tools.
• N / Shift+N steps through results. On a lit net, N visits each part on
  it, at its pin on the net, parts with up to three pins first — the easy
  probe points. Otherwise it steps through the parts the search found. On a
  PDF it steps through the matches. From 2R Tools.
• Pin table filter and sort. Parts with more than 12 pins get a filter
  field above the pin table in the Info tab (pin number, name or net).
  Clicking #, Name or Net sorts the column; again reverses it; a third
  time restores file order. From 2R Tools.
• Worklist ‹ ›. The worklist header steps through its rows in order,
  parts then nets: each step selects the row and takes the board there, and a
  net row opens its reading fields.
• Legend (?). A new ribbon button opens a half-transparent card that says
  what the board is showing, in five modes: pin colours with this board's
  pin count per rule (including the colour no rule claims, per side), part
  type colours, diode reading colours, net line and selection colours, and
  the board keys. Drag it by its header; double-click the header to put it
  back. The pin colour legend idea is from 2R Tools.
• Minimap: always on. The minimap button now cycles off → while panning
  → always on; the always state is the map with a pin.

Changed

• Flip axis is back between Top and Bottom. The one-click ⇅/⇄ toggle the
  toolbar had before v0.39 sits inside the Side switch again. The ⋯ menu
  keeps the same choice. Switch it off from the ribbon's right-click menu.
• Diode readings next to pin numbers and net names (supplement mode) get
  their own place on IC and BGA pins: the reading sits in the pin centre on a
  plate, with the pin number above and the net name below, and the three
  share the pin spacing. A reading appears once it is as legible as a net
  name, instead of as a smudge over its neighbours. Diode-only mode is
  unchanged. The declutter idea is from 2R Tools.

Fixed

• Desktop app: the MCP backend listens on this machine only. With MCP
  turned on, the desktop app's built-in server listened on every network
  interface, so other machines on the network could reach the library and
  file endpoints. It now binds to 127.0.0.1. A new BIND_HOST setting does
  the same for any server install; unset keeps today's behaviour. From 2R
  Tools.
• MCP board actions report failure honestly. select_part and
  highlight_net said they had succeeded for a part or net that does not
  exist, or a selection that did not take. Contributed by
  @pigeon-labs-stack in
  #44.
• The PDF text index finishes on large libraries, and search answers in
  seconds. A file that crashed or timed out the extractor was retried at
  every start; it is now given up after three attempts, a long document cut
  off part-way keeps the pages read, and Stop interrupts the file in
  progress. Search reads the index in bounded chunks and says when results
  are partial. The Library tells a failed or cut-off search from "no
  results" and offers Retry.
• NAS installs: a fragmented index file is compacted. On btrfs (the
  Synology default) the index file was shredded by copy-on-write until every
  query ran past its deadline. New index files are created without
  copy-on-write, and Settings ▸ Library ▸ Compact index file rewrites an
  existing one in place, keeping every extracted page.
• Index stats no longer take minutes on a large index; the Library polls
  them during a sweep.