Hi everyone who uses nightly builds of KiCad!
For those who don’t follow GitLab that closely, the new settings system got merged today.
This brings a few user-facing changes that you should be aware of:
First, user settings are now stored in versioned subfolders of the KiCad config path. The major and minor versions are used, so currently this means “5.99”. When you first launch KiCad, you’ll see a window asking you where to get the settings from. It will default to using your current KiCad installation, but you can manually pick a different path to migrate from.
Your settings will be automatically upgraded as you use KiCad the first time. All of your settings should be preserved: please report any problems you notice so that I can investigate.
There is no backwards-compatibility for settings. Any settings changes you make after migrating your settings to the new system will only apply to newer versions of KiCad. You can continue to run older versions of KiCad on your system, and they will continue to use the old settings files.
If you have been using the KICAD_CONFIG_HOME environment variable to allow running multiple versions of KiCad on the same machine, this technique is still allowed but should no longer be necessary. If this variable is set, it will determine the base path for settings (there will still be version-specific directories created within that base path). I recommend that you clear this variable before launching KiCad after this change, and then when you see the dialog asking where to import settings from, choose the appropriate path (either the default, or wherever you had set KICAD_CONFIG_HOME to depending on where you’d like to import from).
Second, settings are now stored in JSON format. This mostly will only impact people who are used to manually editing settings files. I think the most common reason people do this is to apply color themes. A real color theme system is also coming in the V6 development cycle! For the moment, this change will break the ability to paste in color settings you find from other people until those themes are updated to the new format. I’ll assist in making a migration script so that those of you who have repositories of colors (such as https://github.com/pointhi/kicad-color-schemes) can make versions of these themes that work with the new system.
For the moment, this change only impacts system settings. A similar change is coming that will impact project settings (i.e. those that are currently stored in the KiCad project file and design files). I’ll make another announcement when that change is ready with more details.
If you are paranoid, it might be good to back up your settings files before updating KiCad. As always, please report any issues on GitLab so that we can investigate and solve them as soon as possible.
Best,
Jon
