kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Nick Østergaard <oe.nick@xxxxxxxxx>]

Why does this need to be so complicated?

I think we could just rename the kicad config folder created and
searched by kicad from "kicad" to "kicad5" and be happy in the 5.x
branches.
Den man. 16. jul. 2018 kl. 15.11 skrev Bob Gustafson <bobgus@xxxxxxx>:
>
> There is a tool which allows developers to quickly switch between different versions of Ruby (and their associated gemsets).
>
> Perhaps it could be used for KiCad? Or perhaps just some of RVM's ideas could be adapted for KiCad
>
> https://rvm.io/
>
>
> On 07/15/2018 09:52 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> 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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