kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@xxxxxxxxx>]

As long as we are not pushing the b5 release schedule back I'm fine with
this.

On 7/15/2018 10:52 AM, Adam Wolf wrote:
> 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
> <mailto: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
>     <mailto: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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> 
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