kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 3/14/2014 11:11 AM, Tomasz Wlostowski wrote:
> On 03/14/2014 03:33 PM, Wayne Stambaugh wrote:
>> On 03/14/2014 10:24 AM, Adam Wolf wrote:
>>> Hi folks,
>>>
>>> I heartily agree with this.  I've been trying to show some Kicad users
>>> how to use new features in Kicad, and environment variables is turning
>>> out to be a real turn-off for many of them.
>>
>> That's a rather sad statement.  Before the advent of the GUI (I know I
>> am showing my age), even the secretary (...)
> 
> Hi Wayne,
> 
> In my humble opinion, it's not a matter of technical competence, but the
> first impression that Kicad makes on the first-time user. Most people
> expect software to work more or less out of the box, even the advanced
> ones (that's why among proprietary tools me & my folks @ CERN prefer
> Altium over Cadence, despite the latter being much more powerful).
> 
> When somebody buys a Mac, the usual reason is it to avoid having to edit
> config files. I know many extremely competent analog designers who
> simply use autotrax or old orcad, just because they didn't require any
> configuration.
> 
> The idea of keeping Kicad libs in Github is great, but if the
> first-time-ever user has to set it up in some system config files or run
> bash scripts (think of Windows users!), it will ruin his experience
> (sorry for sounding Steve Jobs-ish...). Eagle, DesignSpark and Altium
> have libraries working out-of-the box. Why we shouldn't?
> 
> My proposal is add a configuration window (see attachment) that appears
> the first time freshly installed Kicad is launched. What do you think of
> this approach?
> 
> Cheers,
> Tom
> 
> 
> 

Hey Tom,

Yes I agree that it should just work and it should.  The problem is not
in the code AFAICT.  The problem appears to be in the location where the
default fp_lib_table file is installed on OSX.  When either CvPcb or
Pcbnew are run for the first time without a define fp_lib_table file in
the user's platform dependent home folder, an attempt is made to copy
the default fp_lib_table file to the user's home folder.  On Linux the
default fp_lib_table file is stored in /usr/share/kicad/template and
copied to ~/.  If the default file cannot be found, then there is no
choice but to create an empty fp_lib_table file which is what appears to
be happening on OSX.  The path(s) searched for the default fp_lib_table
are defined in EDA_APP::FindLibraryPath().  If the path that the OSX
installer is placing the default fp_lib_table is not in the list of
paths, then that is the problem or there is potentially a file
permission problem preventing the file from being copied.  This used to
work fine on both Windows and Linux so if no one changed it, it should
still work.

Regards,

Wayne