kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Adam Wolf <adamwolf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Wayne,

I'll see what I can do. It's possible this is a really quick change,
to change the macos basename from kicad to kicad5, and that would even
have it read different config files, I think!

There are only 2 remaining macOS changes to make this week, and
they're both documentation changes in a README.  I'll handle all other
issues first, and then I'll take a stab at it, and see if it works
out--unless someone else has some bandwidth and then please say
something and we can do some planning together.

Adam
On Mon, Jul 16, 2018 at 8:01 AM Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> 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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