There is something weird with Kicad-nightly PPA for Ubuntu
I used to have 2 PPA installed.
The current 5.1.* stable version and the nightly builds.
I’ve noticed that I don’t have the 5.1.* anymore. Just the v5.99 and v6. This is kind of weird because this is not what I have installed. 5.1.* may have been replaced on daily updates somehow.
It looks like Kicad nightly is almost ready and turning into v6 from v5.99. But as far as I understand it was not released yet. So, the stable one is still Kicad 5.1.* But the kicad-nigtly was renamed to kicad moving. I think this makes Kicad 5.1.* unavailable without some kind of trick.
So my question is,
How can I have Kicad version v5 and the new v6 together in the same machine while v6 is not still official? And maybe for some time after, since some places (companies/teams) may take time to make this change?
Ah, not sure this is the right thing, but somehow the 5.99 is in the impish/universe repository, and it is overriding the 5.1.12 from 5.1 ppa as the default choice.
I could install the right one doing this but I have removed the nightly ppa and its packages.
➜ sudo apt install kicad=5.1.12-202111050918+84ad8e8a86~92~ubuntu21.10.1
I’ve bought myself a brand new PC last week, and installed Linux Mint 20.2.
I’ve installed
5.1.12-84ad8e8a86~92~ubuntu20.04.1
I think that with today’s update, V6.0.0.rc2 changed to:
6.9.9-unknown-0d1748c91c~144~ubuntu20.04.1
My sources are:
paul@cezanne:/etc/apt/sources.list.d$ ls -hl
total 12K
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 150 Dec 18 20:21 kicad-kicad-5_1-releases-focal.list
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 148 Dec 18 20:27 kicad-kicad-dev-nightly-focal.list
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 499 Dec 18 17:04 official-package-repositories.list
paul@cezanne:/etc/apt/sources.list.d$ cat kicad*
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/kicad/kicad-5.1-releases/ubuntu focal main
# deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/kicad/kicad-5.1-releases/ubuntu focal main
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/kicad/kicad-dev-nightly/ubuntu focal main
# deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/kicad/kicad-dev-nightly/ubuntu focal main
sources.list is empty, so what I posted is all I have.
#deb cdrom:[Linux Mint 20.2 _Uma_ - Release amd64 20210703]/ focal contrib main
# This system was installed using small removable media
# (e.g. netinst, live or single CD). The matching "deb cdrom"
# entries were disabled at the end of the installation process.
# For information about how to configure apt package sources,
# see the sources.list(5) manual.
I do not know what the difference between impish and focal is. I don’t use Ubuntu.
Also, try to get your numbers right to avoid confusion. There is now an extra dot between the two nines.
Got to admit, these Ubuntu names are the worst thing. It is good for Marketing, maybe. But for devs/admins, it does not make sense. So there is the version number to clarify. which refers to the Year.Month it was released. They should use numbers inside these files, and not names.
Focal is 20.04 LTS
Impish is 21.10 LTS
sources.list is empty, so what I posted is all I have.
So, you are not using the standard sources.list from Ubuntu. You are using a customized one (this empty file). Which means no app sources at all. Then you are using just the PPAs added by you, maybe. And they are files inside the /etc/sources.list.d/
Not sure if I got this quote here. Which number you are referring to?
Ubuntu have some weird names but they move up in the alphabet.
The latest is Jammy Jellyfish
KiCad has now been tagged for 6.0 release so the nightly is now bumped up to 6.9.9 so if you stay on the nightlies you will get upgraded to 6.9.9 (This is for 7.x version track.)
You can’t have a 6.0RC1-nightly now as its been bumped to 6.9.9
If you use sudo add-apt-repository --yes ppa:kicad/kicad-5.1-releases
You will get the stable 5.1.12 installed.
If you use sudo add-apt-repository --yes ppa:kicad/kicad-6.0-releases
your 5.1.12 will be upgraded to 6.0RC2 ( And then stable 6.0 when its released)
Remember the highest version will always be installed so 5.9.9 was the nightly for stable 6.0, and 6.9.9 is the nightly for stable 7.0
If they made 7.9.9 the nightly for 7.0 then when 7.0 is released to you never upgrade as you will always be on a higher version. (7.9.9)
If’s confusing with the version numbers but easy when you understand how it works.
No, it is not confusing. I got that. It works like that since a long time ago. Numbers are not in sequence but the higher is the newer one. Which makes sense.
Now, why 5.99 is in the Universe repository? Its installer and the binary is named kicad (and not kicad-nightly anymore) on this version and this is bad. It overlaps the current kicad whoever the version is (5.1 ppa, or 6.0)
Now my real question is:
How do you keep both v5 and v6 in your machine independently? having -nightly appended was a solution for testing the nightly releases. But now, how do you keep 2 versions running? Do you have a good solution for that?
That’s a good question. I dont think you can have stable 5.1.12 and soon to be stable 6.0 on the same system as they will both install to the same folder.
You will have to try some magic when you install the .deb. file. Can’t vouch for this but seems doable.
Whether that will cause issues in running KiCad is another question
I, personally, have no issue in migrate to a new version of it. I always do that. But I have teams I work that are really slow to accept changes. So, I have to have both installed.
I would like to suggest Kicad team, if they dont have it already, to use something similar as what they have for kicad-nigtlly.
So, older versions could be renamed to kicad-[verison] as kicad-v5, for instance. So the current stable will be v6 called just kicad and the old version would be renamed to kicad-v5 or kicad-5.1, or something different than kicad. This would fix any issue using an existing solution.
Actually this is a solution for the package managers. Maybe they already do this.
Cool. Do you any idea on what we were talking already? If we can have older versions like the way I have proposed? Or maybe do you know if this is already what happens today?
I find this version bump quite annoying at the moment.
I still have V5.1.12 for “regular stuff” while I’m likely to need V6.0.rcx for screenshots for updating documentation. There is a very reasonable chance I’ve got to make a bunch of them, and all the title bars suddenly have V6.9 in them at the moment.
If you want to stay on the nightly stream but still want 6.0RC2 then best would be to downgrade to 6.0RC2 (If you have already been upgraded to 6.99) and then put a hold on the package so it doesn’t upgrade
This is tangential to the discussion, but apt based systems work like this:
The list of repos is taken from the combination of /etc/apt/sources.list and any files in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/
This setup allows a lot of flexibility. Some distros put everything in /etc/apt/sources.list. Others don’t use that at all leaving it empty but use one or more files in /etc/sources.list.d/. You can add your repos anywhere, but I prefer to put user added repos in their own file(s) in /etc/apt/sources.d/ That way you don’t modify the system repo lists.
A quick browse of the directories under /etc/apt will show you what repo lists are used.
Even within the Debian based repos you will see a lot of variation. For example here is the /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ directory on AntiX, a lightweight distro I use for my old travel netbook.
I have a bold suggestion. Why don’t you just compile yourself? It’s not too difficult; I have written instructions here. You can compile either version if you enable the corresponding repository (temporarily) with the source repo.
