It’s no longer on Launchpad for instance.
Why would you need that? You can write a document and publish it anywhere.
KiCad moved to gitlab. https://gitlab.com/kicad
I am not sure if there is an equivalent to blueprints but i remember that the devs did not really use them even while they where still on launchpad.
Currently, the best way would be to write up your specification and post it to the developer mailing list for discussion.
Yes, but the idea was ‘blueprints’ was a place the developers would naturally look at for new ideas.
As Rene and Ian said, it hasn’t been used for long time, and you can post to the mailing list. If it’s long and more structured than a short email and you want to make it more visible - as you probably want because the mailing list is difficult to read, find and search - you can publish it also elsewhere.
If you play with the source code, you can fork the gitlab project and use the wiki of your fork.
OK Thanks. Maybe there were ‘too many’ suggestions contributed and that is why there is now no standardised way to make ideas known to the developers.
How do I access the mailing list? Do I need to join the gitlab group first?
About publishing elsewhere, I suppose this forum makes sense - is there a standard string to incorporate into the topic title like “Kicad Blueprint:” ?
There’s the feature request chat section https://forum.kicad.info/c/community/feature-request. You can get feedback from other users before discussing about it with the developers. Some people here know KiCad and its development process pretty well even when they aren’t developers, so you may get valuable feedback. But I suggest writing shortly first because it doesn’t make sense to write a long blueprint if for example it can’t fit the developement plans of the project or has been planned already.
If you want to familiarize yourself with the future plans and the project (which I recommend), here’s something to read:
- https://gitlab.com/kicad/code/kicad/-/wikis/home, including roadmaps
- https://gitlab.com/groups/kicad/code/-/epics, loosely gathered collections of smaller tasks
- https://gitlab.com/kicad/code/kicad/issues?sort=weight_desc, bug reports sorted by weight, gives some idea of the most wanted features
- Try also sorting by popularity, i.e. by “thumbs up”
- https://gitlab.com/kicad/code/kicad/-/merge_requests
Before investing a lot of time in a detailed description, I would suggest you contact the developer mailing list and outline your ideas. It could be that there is already work going on that overlaps with your ideas.
I would suggest following the advice of @eelik and using the wiki on your fork of the KiCad GitLab repository if you want to have a markdown formatted specification document describing your idea in more detail.
About publishing elsewhere, I suppose this forum makes sense
While you can certainly discuss things on this forum, and doing so can get useful user feedback, be aware that few developers regularly read and comment on these types of discussions here.
How do I access the mailing list?
To join the developers mailing list, you need a Launchpad account and then you can join here: https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers.
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