kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Dick Hollenbeck <dick@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 05/08/2014 05:10 PM, Rick Walker wrote:
> 
> 
> Hi Dick,
> 
>> it because I don't care if my old software does not load new
>> footprints.  (I type $ make, and I can load the new footprints.) 
> 
> I know you are a code developer and have the highly idiosyncratic kicad
> build process finely balanced at all times.  Typing "make" works for you. 
> 
> I've tried to build kicad three times now, at intervals several months
> apart.  It has always locked up for various problems that involved
> internal settings in other RPM packages that didn't match the Fedora
> defaults.  This means that I would need to install source for several
> other packages, hand configure them and build those packages from
> scratch to get kicad to build. 
> 
> Now imagine that I'm trying to get kicad adopted as a useful tool at
> work so that we could use some of our development effort to contribute
> to the project. 
> 
> Kicad is currently a moving target.  The team doesn't provide "stable"
> builds and the whole system is liable to blow up at any time.  It
> is even worse if one uses the "cloud-based" libraries which are under
> dynamic mutation.  
> 
> The fedora packagers can only guess at which snapshot is the least
> broken and package it up.  If bugs are found, the answer given is
> "rebuild it yourself".  Unfortunately, any version that we "rebuild
> ourselves" is also likely full of new, different bugs.  The normal way
> to fix this problem for code released by adults is to have a stable
> version that gets a functionality freeze, but has bugs back patched from
> the development tree.  It's a pain, but it makes the program useable for
> real work.  Sometimes, being an adult is inconvenient.
> 
> I completely support the effort to make kicad more resistant to a
> particular subset of future changes to the footprint definition file. 
> Having a real tool catastrophically fail when encountering data files
> should only occur very rarely and only at announced major revisions. 
> It's not acceptable to just keep creeping the shared data files and have
> an installed base break every few weeks.  Making the parser ignore
> non-recognized fields makes it possible to add in certain classes of new
> behaviors without affecting an installed base of real users doing real
> work. 
> 
> You can do the make easily, because you are obviously a rare uber-guru,
> but I can tell you that as a relatively skilled C-coder and linux admin,
> it is not a trivial process and certainly not something to require an
> average user to do on a regular basis under panic conditions. 
> 
> That is, not if you want kicad to be something relevant instead of just
> a venue for playing around with fun code ideas. 
> 
> Although I was able to get our team to do several very complex designs
> in Kicad, the team has now switched Allegro for reasons that I'd be
> happy to go into at a future time if anyone is interested. 
> 
> kind regards,
> --
> Rick Walker


Good luck Rick.

I guess if I was on commission I would try and talk you out of your decision.

There is no certainty that any open source project will ever succeed.  Nor is there a
universal definition of success.

I am honoured that you at least think I had something to do with KiCad.

The software is getting pretty useable for me now, and I won't take exclusive credit for
that.  There are some very dedicated contributors and they all deserve credit.

I don't know how I'd feel if I ever ran into a bug in Allegro.  Probably pretty damn
annoyed, and helpless.  It's that fear of helpless-ness that keeps me in KiCad.

If I was having problems with Fedora, I'd dump it.  Generally I like to identify what is
the tail and what is the dog.  Generally the dog should wag the tail and not the other way
around.

kicad-install.sh has worked for some on Fedora, and as of 10 minutes ago, it builds the
pre-kiway version which you might best think of as being stable.  Unless you edit the script.

I've given all I can afford.  You may ask more of me, but if its not in my common
interest, it ain't coming from me.