Kicad Installation

[hermano.poj]

I was reading some docs and realized that Kicad symbols, footprints, 3D packages, templates, and internationalization, and even projects can be cloned from GitHub. It seems very interesting indeed because if some of those libraries changes, only the specific changes would be downloaded, saving bandwidth and time.

However, on the download page, the download file for windows 10 is over a gigabyte and includes every library inside it. Is there anywhere I can find a Kicad install file without any library so that its size is small and the download time is also small? Why there is no such file on the download page?

Am I missing the point searching for that file? Isn’t it reasonable to expect a small Kicad download with no libraries that can be cloned from GitHub?

Finally, can anybody point out a good tutorial on the whole process of integrating Kicad and GitHub, for libraries and projects?

Best Regards.

[eelik]

It all points down to KiCad being a volunteer project and lack of manpower for making the installer. Anyone who has knowledge and time could make a small installer which would download the needed packages on the fly. Maybe you?

[hermit]

I think the main idea is to clone the whole thing the first time and then just do an update for changes.

My code for the changes on Linux:
# Script to update Kicad Version 5 libaries from github
#!/bin/bash

cd kicad-packages3D
git fetch https://github.com/KiCad/kicad-packages3D.git
cd …
cd kicad-symbols
git fetch https://github.com/kicad/kicad-symbols
cd …
cd kicad-footprints
git fetch https://github.com/kicad/kicad-footprints
cd …
exit

With git I’m pretty sure you can just sync what you want but you’d have to research that a bit on your own.

[Rene_Poschl]

For handling the official lib via git see the appendix section of Library management in KiCad version 5