kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Andy Peters <devel@xxxxxxxxx>]

> On Jan 9, 2015, at 4:34 AM, Brian Sidebotham <brian.sidebotham@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> On 8 January 2015 at 13:44, Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> Fully defined paths can be used in the fp-lib-table if that is your
>> preference.  Environment variable substitution is optional.  You are
>> free to use any environment variable you want.  KISYSMOD is merely the
>> variable name used for the default footprint library path.  I use
>> KILCLMOD to point to the path of my custom footprint libraries.  I set
>> these paths to the same disk partition and and path in both windows and
>> linux so I'm always using the same footprint libraries when I'm
>> developing on either platform.
> 
> I think it's clear that users of a GUI, and environment variables do
> not mix well. Personally I like them as they offer me a lot of
> flexibility and I can make scripts to set-up environments that are
> useful to me, but I'm a developer and user.
> 
> I think the best enhancement we could do here is to have an editor for
> expandable variables in kicad. That is, rather than KISYSMOD having to
> be an environment variable (which most users appear to think of as a
> bad disease!) it could instead be a variable set in the KiCad
> settings. The variable in the KiCad settings with the same name taking
> precedence, or vice-versa.
> 
> It's a simple key-value pair editor that means variables can be
> defined in KiCad options through the GUI. This achieves the same thing
> as environment variables without the stigma associated with them and
> offers the interface for editing the values of those variables in the
> GUI that they're associated with.
> 
> Add this to my to-do list if you think it's a reasonable idea. It
> shouldn't take too long to do.
> 
> These variables would be saved to the kicad config. Of course, we
> could also complicate things further in the future and have
> per-project overrides for the variables too if necessary. I think
> something has to be done before the stable release so we're not
> swamped with support questions about this.


I will just chime in and say "I agree with this!" On OS X, setting the environment variables so that Kicad will actually recognize them requires a bit of plist-fu that the Average User won't be able to do.

The ability to set the library paths from the GUI in a standard way, and have those paths be "sticky," makes for a much better user experience.

-a