Official file format description V6

Have the V6 file formats for schematic, symbols, layout and footprints already been frozen?
Is there a plan when to document them?

Reason is, I would like to start to adapt my tools for V6 and I prefer to do it when the formats are frozen
and I prefer to do it with some good and complete documentation (as opposed to checking the source code and by trial and error…).

Thanks!

Looks like not yet documented: https://dev-docs.kicad.org/en/file-formats/

New file format documentation is currently a work in progress.

Don’t know what the timeline is for completing the documentation.

I don’t know if the developers would consider the v6 formats “frozen” but v6 has theoretically been in feature freeze for a long time. There have been occasional tweaks to the formats for bug fixes.

RC1 is slated for two weeks time and I don’t see how file format can easily change after that happens

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There will be no more new features in the file formats for v6, if something is changed it’s a bugfix. In the whole 5.99 cycle there have been only few bugfixes in the formats, it’s highly unlikely this will happen anymore for 5.99/6. A “bug” in a file format is different than a bug in software: it means that some feature in the format or a lack of a feature leads to serious problems which can’t be fixed in another way. Or at least that’s how I understand it. And it’s pretty rare, compared with application source code where critical bugs are usually found even after stable releases (no matter what software or application if it’s complex enough).

That’s what I thought. What I’m curious about though, is what kind of documentation are the developers using (regarding the file formats)??

The source code :slight_smile:

If it’s the lead dev team doing the documentation, I imagine it will take some time to catch up as we are all a bit busy preparing for the release. I know the schematic format documentation is in progress.

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FWIW, I think the board file format document is reasonably up-to-date with 6.0:

https://dev-docs.kicad.org/en/file-formats/sexpr-pcb/

[And if you do find anything that doesn’t match, please let us know.]

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