kicad-developers team mailing list archive

["Richard A Burton" <richardaburton@...>]

> Why is there a specific debian source package? Is this an official
> part of Kicad, and why is it needed?

Why does it exist? Because it's used to build the official debian
kicad packages, as well as the official ubuntu ones.
Why is it needed?
a) because that's how debian packages are built, it's a standard
system which people working with debian and its derivatives should be
familiar with
b) it's used to build the official kicad packages that come with your
distro, unsurprisingly they have to be built according to the
documented standard system
c) it makes it a whole lot easier to build than the manual way you
specified, everything is setup in the appropriate debian way (i.e.
meets debian policy, installs to normal locations for the distro,
doesn't require you to manually figure out the dependencies, etc.)
d) allows you to produce a packages that can easily distribute between
machines or other users (i.e. gives you the standard advantages of a
linux package)
e) if you use the official package stuff it gives you the chance to
contribute to raise any issues you may find as kicad is developed,
thus speeding up adoption of new versions into ubuntu

> This is of course why it would be nice for the Wiki to include
> information about building under different linux distro's.

It's been discussed in the mailing list a number of times before. And
of course since there are kicad packages in your distro a good place
to start when you wanted to know how to build your own would have been
to look at those existing packages. At the very least you could have
looked at the package build dependencies and saved yourself "half the
battle". If you want it on the wiki too feel free to add it.

Richard.