kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 11/24/2013 3:37 PM, Bryant wrote:
> I'm a new developer who has successfully gotten KiCAD to compile on a
> Ubuntu 12.04 that I have following the instructions at
> http://www.kicad-pcb.org/display/DEV/Building+KiCad+on+Linux. I run
> Fedora 20 on my laptop currently, and I'm been working to follow these
> Debian/Ubuntu-specific instructions using the yum packager on Fedora,
> but I've currently run into trouble.
> 
> As of right now the `cmake ...` command executes successfully, but when
> I run make I see the following"
> acutiator /m/B/P/k/build> make
> [  0%] Performing patch step for 'boost'
> Plugin "Bzrtools" is not up to date with installed Bazaar version 2.6.0.
> There should be a newer version of Bzrtools available, e.g. 2.6.
> bzr: ERROR: Error invoking patch: No such file or directory
> 
> make[2]: ***
> [../.downloads-by-cmake/boost_1_54_0/src/boost-stamp/boost-patch] Error 3
> make[1]: *** [CMakeFiles/boost.dir/all] Error 2
> make: *** [all] Error 2
> 
> 1. It looks like this problem was that `patch` isn't installed as part
> of the Fedora build tools package. Can this be added to the cmake prereq
> checking process at the start.

It sounds like your bzrtools or whatever it is called on RPM based
systems is not installed on your system.  The version of bzrtools should
be the same as the installed version of bzr.  We use bzr patch instead
of patch because the patch program may not necessarily be installed on
all platforms (read Windows).

> 
> 2. So my questions are, is the bzrtools version mismatch a problem? I
> get these warnings a bunch.

My guess is yes.  If you have bzr version 2.6 than you should have
bzrtools version 2.6 installed as well.

> 
> 3. What is the process for modifying the Building KiCAD pages on the
> wiki at kicad-pcb.org? On the FAQ at kicad-pcb.org it mentions that one
> should edit the wiki at SourceForge, which is currently down. Where and
> how can I add instructions for building KiCAD on Fedora?

The official wiki is on kicad-pcb.org.  You should contact the
maintainers of the KiCad website.  They should be able to point you in
the right direction.  We no longer use SourceForge.  There is currently
a script that takes care of installing all of the required dependencies
for building KiCad and then builds and installs from the source for
Debian based systems in the scripts folder int he KiCad source code.
You should be able to use a modified version of it for RPM based distros.

> 
> 4. Since I already have this email going, is there any desire to have
> something like a list of easy bugs/features for newbies to tackle? This
> is something that has been incredibly successful for LibreOffice in
> recruiting new developers
> [https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/Easy_Hacks]. Mesa has
> also adopted this strategy and it seems to be working based on the
> mailing list activity [http://wiki.freedesktop.org/dri/NewbieProjects/].
> Would it be worthwhile to compile a list of easy hacks for new comers to
> start with?

Thank you for your interest in helping KiCad.  Unfortunately we don't
have the manpower to generate that kind resource for new developers.
There is a list of tasks at the CERN website at:

http://www.ohwr.org/projects/cern-kicad/wiki/WorkPackages

I believe all of these require advanced knowledge about the internal
workings of KiCad.  I don't know that there is a lot of low hanging
fruit in KiCad other than improving the Documentation and/or component
and footprint libraries.  Help is always welcome.

Best Regards,

Wayne

> 
> Bryant
>