kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Carsten Schoenert <c.schoenert@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello Wayne,

Am 10.06.19 um 20:15 schrieb Wayne Stambaugh:
> We cannot make ngspice 30 the minimum version.  There are far too many
> linux distros where 30 is not available yet.  Please keep in mind,
> Debian stable and the latest Ubuntu LTS version are the benchmarks for
> dependency package versions.  I'm fine with packaging macos and windows
> with 30.

current Debian stable (Stretch) has KiCad version 4.0.5+dfsg1-4 in the
archive and no package libngspice0 at all (not even in non-free) so
there is nothing to take care on here.

The current Ubuntu LTS release 18.04 (Bionic Beaver) has KiCad version
4.0.7+dfsg1-1ubuntu2 and libngspice0 version 27-1.
At least the KiCad version is long long outdated. So also not really
relevant too.

But all relevant current Debian releases are providing a recent KiCad
version and also libngspice0 in version 30.2-1 (from unstable to
stretch-backports). This is also available in all Downstream of Debian
means also in Ubuntu >= 'Cosmic Cuttlefish' are providing KiCad
5.0.0+dfsg1-2, but also libngspice0 in version 27. Updates wont happen.

But Jean-Samuel Reynaud is providing actual versions of KiCad and also
the depending libngspice0 package and they even work in the always
outdated Linux Mint distro. So for me your requirements you like to set
are fulfilled.

And normally the application is defining the requirements. Simulations
seems to be for some users an critical option. So if the maintainers of
ngspice hardly suggesting to use the most recent version of ngspice in
recent KiCad version I would strongly consider to increase this build
dependency.

In the end it's up to the KiCad maintainers to define the requirements
for KiCad. It was a long road to get ngspice into Debian main but in the
end it happened, big thanks to Holger again btw! So Debian has no
problem to provide KiCad with a depending libngspice0 library >= 30.2.

-- 
Regards
Carsten Schoenert