On-ramp for trying out Kicad 6.99?

Software
1

In several other threads, responders have recommended trying this or that feature in 6.99.

Fully realizing that 6.99 is the development version, and very grateful for all the work that so many people are putting into the continued enhancement of Kicad, I have to report that “just giving Kicad 6.99 a try” is harder than it needs to be.

Now, I just spent a half hour simply trying to figure out where to get 6.99 as an installable blob of some kind. So far as I can tell, there’s no reference to 6.99 on kicad.org, and if it’s somewhere on gitlab I can’t figure it out. My only consolation is that google doesn’t know where it is either.

And that led me to wonder if there is, or could be, some central On Ramp page that might be useful to folks like me who aren’t cool enough to already know where it is and what to do with it, but could be giving features a try and reporting on bugs etc.

Some basic “where to get it”, “how to install it without clobbering v6.x”, (or, “go ahead, it won’t clobber 6.x because X, Y and Z”), “do’s and don’ts” etc.

(Feel free to tell me it’s all right there in bold letters on the Kicad home page and I just missed it…)

For what it’s worth, when I stopped searching google for the obvious “Kicad 6.99” and searched for “Kicad Nightly”, I did find:

https://downloads.kicad.org/kicad/windows/explore/nightlies

Not actually labeled as “this is the 6.99 you are looking for”, though the items listed are recent. But then we see that every day there are four different files posted. Which do I need? What is “lite” and why would I want or not want it? Is there anything to be chosen between today’s and yesterday’s? Are some more stable than others?

Again, a few notes on an “On ramp” page would really help us to give the new version a try, in those sparse cracks of time that sometimes open up in which we might get a little bit ahead of the game, if the friction is low enough.

2

Literally blind automated builds generated each day. Nobody is picking or monitoring. 6.99 is simply the development branch, the builds are simply the latest of said branch of code and can include critical bugs at random or be perfectly usable.

No info page exists because the intention has been to avoid making it too easy for people to start using it for production designs when it’s a unstable build for the majority of the year and we can’t support that… People manage to ignore the warnings already as is.

3 Likes
3

And did you eventually find what you wanted?

4

did you eventually find what you wanted

Well, @marekr confirmed that the page that I pointed to is the right place to get the nightly build. So I assume that’s what I need to grab, but have not yet done so.

I still don’t know why there are four files. And I have not learned anything else about any gotchas to avoid, most importantly not to disrupt the already installed Kicad 6.x, or how to at least open a K6 project in K7 without disrupting the project.

5

Downloads for nightlies (nightly versions of 6.99) are available at Kicad.org.

Click on download, select your poison (OS), then scroll down below the BIG pink warning to the link.

First install, use the recommended inclusion of the libraries. The lite version omits the libraries (no need to install these daily).
Not sure about the first two files… don’t use windows.
Copy a 6 project… File > Save as, then rename, possibly easiest.

6.99 is completely and utterly independent (even has a separate icon) from 6.x.x, hence the need to include libraries on first installation.

Each download includes all the work by the developers for the preceding day. Some members spend time and effort bug chasing.
Results of bug chasing can be found on Gitlab. To see the efforts, go to Help > Report Issues then click Issues at left of screen. Up top you will find Open, Closed & All.

1 Like
6

Since you already hinted at using windows

And as jmk mentioned, on the bottom, below the pink, there is a link:

image

Now I wonder why you missed that. Maybe you did not make the connection between V6.99 and “Nightly Development Builds”?

And as has also already been mentioned, The nightly builds are (or at least should be (I don’t use Windows) completely independent from the stable version. They are separate programs, and you can have them both installed and run them at the same time. There is only one big gotcha that I know of. Once a project has been saved in the V6.99 format, an older KiCad version can not open it anymore. As a consequence you have to keep track of what KiCad version you use for each of your projects.

7

@paulvdh – hmm, fair enough, somehow I missed that.

Sorry everyone for my lack of observation skills. Blurry eyes from poring over the API docs all day and triangulating unexpected results. Yeah, that’s my excuse.

Maybe I was thrown off because the page headings go:
Stable Release
Download Verification
… so if the page already wants to talk about download verification (and not subsidiary to Stable Release), that suggests there are no more downloads to be found by scrolling further. A wrong assumption, obviously.

Having failed to notice that entry point, the main obstacle was that I could not get google to find various combinations of “Kicad 6.99 download” and similar.

“6.99” is the way everyone discusses it, yet the string “6.99” is not to be found associated with the Nightly Build blurb you displayed, nor on the Nightly Build download page.

Anyhow, others who also get lost will now have this fine page to refer to :slight_smile:

1 Like
8

For the time being…
In about a month, around the end of January 2023 KiCad V7 will be released and KiCad-Nightly wil have version number 7.99.

9

and KiCad-Nightly wil have version number 7.99.

Well perhaps at that time the string “7.99” could be affixed to the key places where “Nightlies” are mentioned. Because I predict at that point everyone will refer to that next version as “7.99”.

10

I didn’t notice whether anyone answered how to open a 6.0 project in a nightly development build (6.99) without changing it so it can’t be opened by 6.0 anymore.
Copy the whole project to a separate location / folder and use separate projects for 6.0 and nightly, i.e. branch it. There is no (supported or simple, possibly none at all) way to take the work back from nightly to 6.0.

1 Like
11

@hmk Thanks for highlighting that issue.

One might expect to be able to just view a K6 project in K6.99, so long as it doesn’t get saved.

But if K6.99 converts the project on opening it, then that might overwrite the original, and then you’re up the creek? (Maybe it prompts before converting, but easy to be seduced into just agreeing?)

Anyhow, I pretty much assumed that copying the project to a different location would be needed, and others should be aware of that too.

12

The safe approach is copying the project. Just opening it in nightly might not write to the files, and there is even a small info text that the project will be changed when saved, but the risk of human error leading to the project being unreadable by the stable 6.0 is very high…

1 Like
13

the Windows default structure is:
This PC - Documents - KiCad - 6.0 - projects - my project
and
This PC - Documents - KiCad - 6.99 - projects - my project
Presumably 7.0 and 7.99 will be created later
Simply copy your 6.0 project to the 6.99 tree and don’t risk shutting yourself out

I would say 6.99 is at beta status now. No new features and a string freeze

14

In the FWIW department: I have many years as a hardware EE, but I have no particular skills WRT software. I used 5.99 for many months until the release of version 6. I had little difficulty and no regrets about this choice. I will say that my KiCad efforts were more hobby and less professional, but I did produce gerbers and boards which I assembled and tested and used. So I would say to at least zip and save a copy of your 6.XX files (and maybe any personal libraries?) before loading them into 6.99 and then try it and have fun…

15

Correct.
A yellow warning bar appears across the top of the work page, stating this, but most people have the “save” icon hard wired into their automatic reflexes. :frowning_face:

16

FWIW, I agree it’s slightly confusing that people refer to it as “6.99” and think it would be better if people in the forums called it “nightlies” rather than us changing the website to “6.99” (which will become out of date every year, and also makes it less clear that it’s a nightly automated build rather than a single release version)

When people say “such and such is available in 6.99” people may get the idea that “6.99” is some single version that is available somewhere. Saying “available in nightlies” makes it more clear that they are not referring to any specific version.

17

So you are not afraid of people confusing a nightly with a night cap? :smile:

18

In my mind, “nightlies” means “the automated builds that run every night and are handled or quasi-handled by the KiCad project”, whereas 6.99 means “any build (automated/semi-official or ad-hoc/personal) from the master branch prior to v7 being released” :slight_smile: When I do my own builds, it seems weird to call them nightlies, although I suppose that confusion is more minor than people confusing 6.99 with a specific version.

I realize that nightlies have a specific connotation beyond what I wrote above (they’re nightly builds of the current pre-release development version, as opposed to “testing” builds of 6.0 head that are also built nightly) but that still relies on people being familiar with the specific usage of the term by the KiCad team.

Words are hard, and I guess in conclusion I agree with the other Graham that perhaps this should be written down more clearly on the website.

19

This, too, is certainly annoying, for those who don’t know already. pdbs files are extra files only for those who can debug (if you have to ask, you don’t want them). exe files are the installers, and “lite” doesn’t have the libraries in the installer package, although there’s a install-time option to download and install libraries. If you download a nightly for the first time, you may want the larger non-lite installer, but if you download and update day by day, you probably want to save time/bandwidth and use the lite packages without re-installing the libraries every time.

20

In some ways maybe we should just swap 6.99 in the UI where possible with “nightly”? We could keep the version info paste the same.

1 Like