kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 12/7/2017 11:59 AM, kristoffer Ödmark wrote:
> I still think this is strange reasoning, so the version 5 will be built
> differently on every system? I thought v5 should include the spice
> simulator?
> 
> Are you saying there is no recommended way to deliver kicad? So when I
> send a file to my friend on windows, he might not be able to do the same
> things as I can on ubuntu, or on arch or whatever?

Yes, that is exactly what I'm saying.  it is possible kicad could have
different feature sets depending on the availability of dependencies on
the target platform.  The kicad project has no control over this.  If a
platform doesn't have dependency support for spice, they can still
provide a kicad package without spice support.  That's better than no kicad.

> 
> I understand that there are optional dependencies, but basically having
> the option to turn them off still seems better than having the option to
> turn them on. At least when turning them off I will understand why they
> are not in kicad. And a new developer might find this easier as well.

I doubt that new developers will find this easier.  Maybe you weren't
around when kicad didn't provide nightly builds and the kicad build
config downloaded and built most of the major dependencies from source.
We spent more time helping folks build kicad than we did coding.

> 
> Can we at least have an update to the build docs that reflects what is
> deemed non-experimental or a line stating that everything should be
> turned on?

The build docs[1] are up to date.  None of the optional features of
kicad are listed as experimental.  The advance graphics context is not a
feature but rather an enhanced graphics context provided by wxwidgets
and is the only experimental build option.  Everything else is
production ready.

[1]:
http://docs.kicad-pcb.org/doxygen/md_Documentation_development_compiling.html

> 
> - Kristoffer
> 
> On 2017-12-07 16:53, Wayne Stambaugh wrote:
>> I hope users are no longer building kicad from source.  We tried that
>> already and it was a disaster.  The build options should reflect the
>> dependencies available on the platform it's being built on.  Whether or
>> not an optional feature is ready for release is not relevant.  For
>> example if ngspice was not built with the --with-libngspice option
>> (which apparently on arch linux it is not), setting KICAD_SPICE=ON will
>> fail during build config.  It is up to the system package developer to
>> determine if kicad should be built with spice support.
>>
>> On 12/6/2017 9:04 AM, Kristoffer Ödmark wrote:
>>> Are we not in feature freeze, the features that I enabled by default is
>>> from my understanding the ones that will be built into the official
>>> ones. And yes, the people that are compiling a non-standard install
>>> shuld be savvy enough to be change the compilation settings. That is why
>>> i think the default build should reflect the ones being run by the less
>>> savvy users.
>>>
>>>   -Kristoffer
>>>
>>> On 12/06/2017 11:31 AM, Simon Richter wrote:
>>>> Hi,
>>>>
>>>> On 06.12.2017 11:12, Kristoffer Ödmark wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> I do not see why anyone is even objecting to this? Where is the
>>>>> logic at
>>>>> having a default build that does not correspond to any of the official
>>>>> packages?!
>>>> That usually happens because the nightly builds enable all the
>>>> experimental features to allow people to test them, but the default is
>>>> still "disabled" because they introduce extra dependencies and make
>>>> life
>>>> difficult for people compiling from source.
>>>>
>>>> The default for new options needs to be decided before the release, I
>>>> think, and "release" packages should go with that.
>>>>
>>>>      Simon
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
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> 
> 
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