kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Mark Roszko <mark.roszko@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hey guys,

So with 5.0 approaching theres something of an annoying problem on
windows (that many are complaining about). The install location!
Currently, even though you can install kicad into separate folders if
you wanted to, kicad still tries to write to the same appdata folder!

Why would you want both the new and old? Because if you want to tweak
a old design, you don't want to risk opening it in newer versions and
having unforseen bugs. New designs sure, you really want to use the
latest and greatest, but the old is a risk not worth taking,
especially in the commercial field ;)

Also there is a settings conflicts between 4.0 and 5.0 sharing appdata.

I've seen some kicad forum "workarounds" where they use launcher
scripts that set KICAD_CONFIG_HOME each time. While it works, its
completely against the windows way :3


What I propose, is we patch KiCad a little to:

1. Write to appdata in a versioned manner (just minor and maybe minor version)
C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\kicad 4.0\
C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\kicad 5.0\
C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\kicad 6.0\

2. Potentially prompt the user on first-start to copy settings.
(Maybe? Might be too much work for the final 5.0)

Then we patch the installer to follow the convention of:
C:\Program Files\KiCad 4.0\
C:\Program Files\KiCad 5.0\
C:\Program Files\KiCad 6.0\

This would do what every other CAD and IDE does on Windows (versioned installs).

But what if people want to install in crazier ways ?!
Well then that should beyond the scope of the "standard" installs and
they are on their own. (Just like other tools)