kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Marco Ciampa <ciampix@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Sat, Jun 28, 2014 at 09:47:18AM -0400, Michael McCormack wrote:
> This might be a bit off topic - I would like to know what distro and what
> branch is used to Kicad development.
> 
> Background - I use Linux only for development of embedded systems, and
> would like to get relatively recent copies of Kicad, Spice, Code::Blocks,
> OpenOCD, GDB, etc.  But every off the shelf distro seems to only have two
> year old releases of at least one of these packages and as a result, when I
> try to install from source I run into innumerable library problems because
> of the old libraries that are invariably required.  I will say at the
> moment, I'm not sure that Kicad is one of the packages I use that requires
> cutting edge libraries; but, I am trying to get ready for the next rebuild
> of my PC.
> 
> I don't want to become a Linux systems guru, I want to remain an embedded
> developer; so is there an off the shelf distro that is used for development
> of Kicad?

I agree 100% with you. Besides I think that using Linux should never a
pain in the ass like being able to recompile kernel by yourself and so
on. I am not a Linux expert and _love_ Ubuntu for being so easy (and hate
it for Unity but that's another story...)

my 0.1 euro cent

Anyway I can only testify that using a decent Kicad is a matter of using
the script that you find in the download section.

The only problem I found was that for some reason (why? is it possible to
have it fixed?) some obscure cmake  options are disabled by default and 
you have to manually enable to have the module browser enabled.
And no, specifying the option manually to the script does _not_ work.

I have been helped by irc to find the way to circunvent this problem
(thanks again) and now I update my kicad copy every now and then and
it continue to work well.

I also suggest _not_ to use the ppa since that code is experimental 
and never worked well.

Another solution, that I must admit it worked, is using the Windows 
version with Wine, though the script version is much more updated.

Hope it helps you.

-- 


Marco Ciampa

"L'utopia sta all'orizzonte. Mi avvicino  di due passi, lei si allontana
di due  passi. Faccio dieci  passi e  l'orizzonte si allontana  di dieci
passi.  Per quanto cammini, non la raggiungerò  mai. A cosa serve
l'utopia? A questo: serve a camminare."              Eduardo Galeano

+--------------------+
| Linux User  #78271 |
| FSFE fellow   #364 |
+--------------------+