kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Adam Wolf <adamwolf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I guess the fact that environment variables are tricky to set for graphical
applications for the Mac may be a blessing here :)

Should we try to package a macOS version that installs to
/Applications/KiCad5 and /Library/Application Support/kicad?

Adam

On Sun, Jul 15, 2018, 2:41 AM Eeli Kaikkonen <eeli.kaikkonen@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

> There are some people in the user forum who have spent time with these
> v4->v5 problems, including me and Rene. The consensus about the environment
> variables seems to be what Rene already said, that they should not (without
> explicit user intervention) be set for the system, but from KiCad itself.
> Nick confirmed that the current v5 installer won't set them by default.
> They are still a problem if they have been set by v4 installer.
>
> su 15. heinäk. 2018 klo 5.04 Strontium (strntydog@xxxxxxxxx) kirjoitti:
>
>> I honestly think each major revision of KiCad should be considered a NEW
>> program, installs to a new place has its configuration and libraries all
>> in a new location.  Only Incremental updates 5.0 -> 5.1 should be
>> considered upgrades.
>>
>>
> I agree. It's probable that many users will want to continue with v4 for
> old projects but v5 for new, and in the future the same thing will be true
> for v5 vs. v6, because they break the file/project compatibility. But where
> the compatibility is kept it's more likely to be considered as just an
> upgrade.
>
>
>> Kicad configuration isn't complex or onerous so if a user wants to bring
>> a Kicad4 config into Kicad5 or 6 or whatever, then they do that
>> themselves, otherwise after install Kicad5 is a fresh blank sheet with
>> no relationship to anything that happened on the users computer in
>> Kicad4.  I am not familiar with the issues on Windows, but I would have
>> thought now this is mostly a packaging issue only??
>>
>>
> I tried modifying the Windows installer, I only needed to replace some of
> "KiCad" strings with "KiCad5" and it can install v5 alongside v4
> independently. The only problem is the configuration and the environment
> variables set by v4. They can be handled with a startup script. See
> https://forum.kicad.info/t/does-v5-have-to-overwrite-on-install/11282 for
> some details.
>
> I also agree if it can't work this way now on Windows, then its all a
>> bit late for V5, but maybe V6 can consider itself a new program distinct
>> from V5.  This would also help with testing, because users could use V5
>> for daily work, but also easily install a V6 daily side by side.
>>
>
> All this could be done with the Windows installer, provided that a startup
> script would be offered.
>
> To make this all, at least the startup script, as simple as possible I
> would suggest one (or three) small changes to KiCad (for 5.1, or even
> 5.0.1?). Add command line options --config=/path/to/config and
> --ignore-env-vars. The former is obvious and would override
> KICAD_CONFIG_HOME system environment variable. The latter would make KiCad
> ignore all system environment variables and use the current internal logic
> and the path settings UI instead. That way the old variables could be left
> for v4 and the newer versions would be completely independent if the
> command line switches were used. The command line switch for the config
> path would be mostly for convenience. In Windows starting a program with
> custom environment variables is tedious and error prone to write (see the
> above mentioned thread). Command line switches are much easier.
>
> It could also be possible to make --ignore-env-vars=true by default.
> Sharing the environment variables would be a special case if the user wants
> that.
>
> The general problem with using system environment variables is that they
> are good for situations when there's only one version of a program on the
> system, and/or several processes share the same variable values. Neither of
> them is true for parallel installations of KiCad.
>
> Eeli Kaikkonen
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