Migrating to v6 on openSUSE 15.3

This may help people who are using KiCad on openSUSE, which is currently at 15.3, with 15.4 expected in June. TL;DR: Just take the defaults and 99% will be done for you.

At last I’m between projects and what’s more I have a board that I want to redo in v6 with SMT, so I have a point of comparison.

  1. Select repositories. Go to KiCad packages for openSUSE expand 15.3’s Show community packages. There are two user built contributions for 6.0.x at the moment. Either one will do. Click on 1 Click Install.

  2. Select packages. This will open up YaST and will add too many additional repositories. Use Customize to narrow it down to the user repo you chose above, X11:wxWidgets and science, a total of three. If you don’t have Electronics already enabled, add that too. In case you are wondering, only the main kicad package is installed from the user repo, the others come from the Electronics, and 2 other repos. Reason is kicad was not built for 15.3 due to dependencies on other packages, notably wxWidgets, not in the official 15.3 repos, but will be ready for 15.4

  3. Install. This will download several hundred MB and take a few minutes. You probably have to allow several Python packages to be superseded when it asks.

  4. Remove any old v5 packages. Do rpm -qa “*kicad*” The only v5 package I saw was kicad-lang-en which contains “translations”. There is no v6 package but you don’t need it. Sorry I don’t know what to do about other languages other than to delete the v5 version.

  5. Migrate configuration. The first time you run kicad and components it will ask you if you want to migrate your configuration files. Take the defaults.

  6. Libraries. System libraries should have been installed from Electronics repo and just work. Personal libraries need to be converted. In the Symbol Editor > Preferences > Manage Symbol Libraries, add your Legacy v5 library (.lib), then Migrate, which will create a .kicad_sym to surplant the .lib. In the Footprint Editor > Preferences > Manage Footprint Libraries, add your library (.pretty). No migration required.

  7. 3D models. In the Footprint Editor > Preferences > Configure Paths, check that KICAD_USER_3DMOD points to your directory of 3D models.

  8. Migrate project files. Backup your project. The Schematic Editor and PCB Editor will indicate that you are opening v5 files and that they will be saved in v6 format. Do that.

  9. Reload footprints. In the PCB Editor you will not see objects in the 3D viewer until you Tools > Update Footprints from Library.

That’s it! It took me longer to write this than to move to v6. :smiley_cat:

This topic was automatically closed 90 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.