MacOS 10.11 and KiCAD 5

Software
1

Hi,

First the documentation for downloading and OS support is inconsistent. On the download page, it shows one version for MacOS 10.14, and another for 10.11 --> 10.13 inclusive.

I erased v4 on my 2009 macBookPro that reside in my basement lab, and downloaded and insatlled v5 for 10.11-13. I am running v10.11 (El Cap).

Bzzzt. Pops up an error that it requries 10.12+.

  1. Not what the site says
  2. A problem for many with solid Intel Core Duo 2 machines that are end-of-life at 10.11, like me.

So this is both a documentation error report and a plea to support El Cap since a bunch of usable machines can’t upgrade from there.

Thank you,

G

2

I can see that in the download page it says 10.11-10.13. That’s an error. Above that it says “KiCad is known to work on Mac OS X 10.12 through macOS 10.14.” Likewise in the system requirements.

The requirements page says also:

KiCad supports major operating systems that remain supported by their developers. After the operating systems’ respective organizations stop releasing updates for the system, KiCad will not be specifically tested with the unsupported system. Unsupported operating systems may continue to work with KiCad beyond this time but bugs must be reproduced on a supported operating system before they will be addressed by KiCad.

EDIT: with google I can find information about El Capitan support: “El Capitan is no longer receiving security updates as of August 2018.”

3

Unfortunately, KiCad cannot build on 10.11 due to some of its dependencies dropping support for that version. Since 10.11 is not supported by Apple, the decision was made to drop official KiCad support for 10.11 and focus on ensuring compatibility with the recent OS versions.

Thanks for pointing out the error on the website. I submitted a pull request to the website to fix it, so it will hopefully be updated soon.

2 Likes
4

Well, thanks for the reply.

But I plead to simply allow it to run unsupported for those of us with no choice; running 4.x on one computer and 5.x on another is simply too troublesome - so it pretty much sinks my ability to use KiCAD in my lab space; and I am sure it affects others similarly.

G

5

What @imcinerney meant is that the developers can’t get the latest version of KiCad working on El Capitan (with reasonable amount of work) even if they wanted to. KiCad depends on things which don’t work on that OS version.

6

@Just_Me, KiCad 5.0.2 should still be able to run on 10.11, and you can download it from here: https://kicad-downloads.s3.cern.ch/osx/stable/kicad-unified-5.0.2-5.dmg. I believe that the change from 5.0.2 to 5.1 is where the 10.11 support was ended.

2 Likes
7

that is awesome, many thanks!

Would be good to put a pointer on the download page for those of us who have little choice - with a big “no support” banner or whatever is required. TY! G

8

Thanks Again “I”

Its up and running. Maybe it’s intentional, but i found no pointers to “old”, “unsupported” or “deprecated” versions. Running great.

Thanks for helping me out.

G

9

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