Hi,
I have started KiCAD after a few months. I started drawing a group bus called SDRAM{_D[0…15]} with the intetion to add address and other signals later. However, I noticed that by pressing D, I could not unfold the signals from the bus. So I looked into the Place menu and the Unfolding tool was nowhere to be found. OK, so I looked into Hotkeys. Nothing. I could trace a year old discussion about changing the shortcut for unfolding, but then - it seems that bus unfolding feature has disappeared from KiCAD. No mention of it in manual, no mention in forum, no mention on bug tracker.
Please, could anyone tell me whether I am experiencing some kind of Mandela effect by remembering a tool which never was or was it for some reason removed without changing the manual or announcing it anywhere?
Thank you for your response.
//EDIT: The tool cannot be found even in context menu of the bus.
Bus Unfolding is a new feature for V6, it is only available in the nightly builds.
EDIT: as is the new bus syntax, which it looks like you’re using
We’ll start updating the manual for V6 after the feature freeze
Thanks,
confirmed - it is in the nightly builds.
What I find quite confusing is the naming of the manual. The MASTER version of manual which I found by Googling, indicates in no way that it is intended for the nightly builds or a new upcoming version so I thought it was written for the current stable version. It even states explicitly that it was written in 2015 when the 4.x branch was state-of-the-art.
Where can I report a bug in the manual? I think that it should state properly when it was written and that the MASTER version should be renamed to something like NIGHTLY or just about anything less cryptic.
“master” is a programming term, the nightly builds come from a branch called “master” by convention. I agree it would make sense to call it something else in the manual.
Issues with the documentation can be raised here: https://gitlab.com/kicad/services/kicad-doc/-/issues
I understand what master stands for in the terminology of Git, but it seems confusing even for me to have a drop/down list on the webpage which allows to select 4.0 / 5.0 / 5.1 / MASTER as the version of the document because there is no way to tell what MASTER points to at the webpage - it doesn’t tell from which repository the MASTER was fetched or compiled into the HTML form, when it was last fetched and so on.
Thank you for your help. I will raise this issue on GitLab. This thread can probably be closed now.
We have corresponding branches in Git and those drop downs on the doc website are generated directly from those branches. So currently “master” means the code that will become 6.0, but after 6.0 is released it means the code that will become 7.0 and so on.
I understand that, but it is not transparent from the point of view of a user trying to find documentation. There is no way to find out what MASTER means other than asking on forum as I had to do now because there is no link to the repository used to fetch the documentation from. Especially since there is a fake release date in the manual.
Example (and it is exactly what I did):
User wants to find out how something a bit more complicated can be done in KiCAD.
User uses Google.
User finds first link which throws him to the master version.
User find what he needs and tries to use that feature in KiCAD.
The feature is missing in his KiCAD, so he starts searching forums and bug trackers to find out what is going on.
After half an hour of searching, user reverts back to the manual, checks the URL - it does not belong to any archaic version. The document states that it was written in 2015 - WHAT?
User asks on forum to find out what is going on. He finds out that the features are only in nightly builds.
User tries browsing the KiCAD webpage for more versions of the manual.
User finds a drop-down menu. There is a few versions and then MASTER version - WHAT?
User feels like an idiot.
I suggest that a few sentences in the form “This version of manual is intended for the nightly builds. Features listed in this manual may be missing in stable builds. For manual for stable releases, use the drop-down menu on the upper right side of this webpage and select a numbered version of your choice.” could help reduce confusion.
It took me quite a lot of time to find out what was going on, because I was using this feature a year ago on nightly builds and so I did not expect it to be missing from stable builds up to this date.
However, it is only a slight problem which in my opinion could be solved by replacing the MASTER label at the webpage by NIGHTLY, BETA, UPCOMING VERSION or anything similar.
I agree! We should probably call master “Nightly” or something, and also make sure the dates are correctly updated 
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