I’m currently running KiCad 2013-07-07 BZR4022, which I know is far behind the times, but it’s very stable. The stability is vital because I have a bunch of production designs in it that I’m managing and anything that would interrupt that workflow would really set me back a bit. I’m prepared to deal with the usual sort of confusions with upgrading, but seeing things like “KiCad doesn’t export a BOM anymore” really frighten me.
2013-07-07 BZR4022 is still listed on the official KiCad page as “Old Stable”, with no official / unofficial stable upgrade path that I can find.
Would you recommend I stay at my working version? Is there a compelling reason to go to a different one, like libraries that make sense?
There are a lot of people in the same boat as you. Unfortunately, KiCAD, at least in my opinion, has taken 1 step forward and two steps back. It’s great that they are adding new features, but they do it at the expense of changing things that work. Your BOM example is just one of those examples. It should be possible to make a BOM, but they but they made it a whole adventure in itself to going. I still have not been able to make it work successfully because when I think I put the parameters in correctly, it just hangs . In my case, I simply reverted back to 4022 every single time.
As of know, KiCAD is going through LOTS of changes. In just 2 years, they went from the .brd format, to the .kicad_pcb format, to the new .kicad_pcb format that is not backwards compatible unless you know what to manually edit in the file. Since you are on 4022, you have probably already seen the horrific integration of the s-expression library format. And from what I hear, they are looking into changing more stuff.
I am not bashing KiCAD by any means as I actually think it is the best free CAD software on the market. After all, my complaints are the very reasons why Microsoft hates open source. However, if you are using this at a company, I advise you stay at 4022 unless you have good reason to upgrade (ie more board layers). There is just too much fluctuation going on from build to build. My recommendation would be to use what you have and have winbuilder let you demo a newer version.
I’ve only started using KiCad this year, so more experienced users will probably have a different view. So the following is from my experience over a few short weeks learning and using KiCad.
I started with the stable Windows version, did Chris’ blinky tutorials, and while I still have BZR4022 installed, I’m using BZR5410 presently which was constructed using WinBuilder. The push/shove router, using Eagle libraries natively (I’m migrating from Eagle) and features that assist in creating custom board shapes easier mean I have no reason to launch and use the stable version. Also, while longer term users probably have a substantial footprint library the standard set in the newer version is far broader.
I can’t speak much of the BZR4022, as I moved quickly on, and haven’t produced any boards using it. But if you want to try the newer one I can recommend using winbuilder to setup a trial. You can always go back if you don’t like what you see as it doesn’t overwrite anything of the real installation.