KiCad 6: importing settings from previous version does nothing?

[dhaillant]

Hi,

When I open KiCad 6 for the first time, I’m prompted with a window (“Configure KiCad Settings Path”) offering either the ability to import settings from a previous version or start with default settings.

The choice “Import settings from a previous version at:” shows the correct location of the previous settings (for instance /home/user/.config/kicad).
However, selecting this choice seems to do nothing.

For example, the paths to symbol and footprints libraries are not imported at all. The paths shown in “Configure Paths” are the default ones (KICAD6_FOOTPRINT_DIR, KICAD6_SYMBOL_DIR…)

Same for Global Symbol Library Table (I have to specify “Copy custom global symbol library table” and manually look for the correct “sym-lib-table” file)
Idem for Global Footprint Library Table (with “fp-lib-table”)

In these two windows, the paths KICAD_SYMBOL_DIR and KISYSMOD are empty.

The expected behaviour would be, in my opinion, to get those paths correctly retrieved and integrated into KiCad 6 settings. Otherwise, I don’t see the real purpose of this wizard…

Also, just as a side note: if a lib cannot be found in “Symbol Libraries” window, when closing it by clicking “Ok”, you get an error message stipulating “Symbol library failed to load. Library not found”, while closing the “Footprint Libraries” window doesn’t care if the libs are accessible or not.

Thank you
David

Application: KiCad

Version: 6.0.0-d3dd2cf0fa~116~ubuntu20.04.1, release build

Libraries:
wxWidgets 3.0.4
libcurl/7.68.0 OpenSSL/1.1.1f zlib/1.2.11 brotli/1.0.7 libidn2/2.2.0 libpsl/0.21.0 (+libidn2/2.2.0) libssh/0.9.3/openssl/zlib nghttp2/1.40.0 librtmp/2.3

Platform: Linux 5.11.0-44-generic x86_64, 64 bit, Little endian, wxGTK, xubuntu, x11

Build Info:
Date: Dec 23 2021 14:23:02
wxWidgets: 3.0.4 (wchar_t,wx containers,compatible with 2.8) GTK+ 3.24
Boost: 1.71.0
OCC: 7.5.2
Curl: 7.68.0
ngspice: 31
Compiler: GCC 9.3.0 with C++ ABI 1013

Build settings:
KICAD_USE_OCC=ON
KICAD_SPICE=ON

[eelik]

@dhaillant

For example, the paths to symbol and footprints libraries are not imported at all.

In this case “for example” means “only”.

This is a deliberate decision. Using different library versions with different KiCad versions is problematic. KiCad couldn’t handle for example a situation where an unsuspecting user would import the library setup from v5 to v6 and then uninstall v5. Problem here, problem there. Importing the library tables automatically would lead to even bigger problems. Most probably a user wants to use the new libraries with the new version.

Library configuration is maybe the most complex part of KiCad in non-standard or non-expected situations. I hope it gets better. Now there’s a chance to give feedback before v7, and the situation is already better because things have already changed after v5 where parallel installations and version migration wasn’t handled almost at all.