kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Johannes Maibaum <jmaibaum@xxxxxxxxx>]

Am Dienstag, dem 29.06.2021 um 10:53 -0400 schrieb Steven A. Falco:
> For fun, I tried running through the README.md file.  I hit a slight
> snag in that the "flatpak install" prerequisite step failed with:
> 
> error: No remote refs found similar to ‘flathub’

Good catch, MR merged, thanks, Steven! Regular flatpak users tend to
have flathub activated already, or will likely know what to do facing
an error like this. But your line will help first-time users for sure 
while they are trying to do their first flatpak steps.


Ruth, I can only second Jeff's and Jon's recommendation again to try
following the steps outlined in the README at
https://gitlab.com/kicad/packaging/kicad-flatpak/kicad-nightly-flatpaks/kicad-nightly-flatpak

It will do the following almost 100% automatically:

- Install a known development toolchain + environment (the freedesktop
flatpak SDK)
- Download and build all KiCad dependencies (including wx 3.1, as
bundled with wxPython Phoenix v4.1.1) missing from the freedesktop SDK
- Download and build the current tip of KiCad's master branch (at the
time of running flatpak-builder) from source
- Install the resulting flatpak this to a local flatpak user repository
on your disk (cleaning up all building artefacts beforehand)

After this is done (might take up to a few hours, depending on your
build machine), you should be able to

flatpak run --user org.kicad.KiCad.Nightly

already. Though, I'd suggest to also install the KiCad templates,
symbols, footprints, and (depending on your needs) the 3D models, which
come as individual flatpak extensions. You can find all of these
"flatpak manifests" (the build definitions) in the kicad-nightly-
flatpaks group on Gitlab:

https://gitlab.com/kicad/packaging/kicad-flatpak/kicad-nightly-flatpaks

Each of these need to be built individually, like the main KiCad
flatpak (step-by-step instructions can be found in each sub repo's
README). Building the extensions will be quick, as they are only
donwloading the data, and putting them into the correct location inside
the flatpak repo for the main application to find them on subsequent
launch.

Am Dienstag, dem 29.06.2021 um 14:14 +0100 schrieb Ruth Ivimey-Cook:
> Could the team consider making a flatpak of kicad-nightly available, 
> linked to wx 3.1.x (not necessarily latest), and document on the 
> relevant page how to install and use it for those like me who are
> unused 
> to the flatpak?

Having pre-built, ready-to-install-and-use Nightly flatpaks is on the
TODO list. It hasn't been done yet, because we need to be hosting our
own flatpak repository somewhere, and we need to be using our own
machine to build them regularly.

Flathub cannot be used to build and upload nightly builds. It only
allows stable (hence you get 5.1.10 over there right now, using wx3.0),
and "beta" releases. The latter which I am planning to do for the
upcoming KiCad 6.0 RC releases (using wx3.1).


Johannes