Okay I am super excited about having V5.0.0 downloaded and ready to go. Does anyone know that the procedure is for a painless installation? should I remove 4.0.7 first? what happens to my libraries etc…
I assume you are talking about your personal libs? As long as they are not located in any system directory they should be safe from the update
Kicad 5 will come with a new set of libraries if you choose to install them. (Not sure if every installer for every operating system will offer the option not to install the libs.)
However the new libs will not all be added if you had v4 installed previously. (your fp-lib-table will not be updated.)
So you either need to download the version 4 lib and manually install it if you want to keep using that one or you need to add the v5 footprint libs to the fp-lib-table (after removing the old v4 entries) Otherwise you will have a mixed lib setup where you have the footprint libs from version 4 but the symbol and 3d model libs from version 5. (And yes the devs know this is not ideal but there was simply not enough time to implement a system that would work for everyone.)
One thing you might consider is installing v5 in such a way that you can still run v4 on the same machine. (Use v4 to maintain old projects but v5 for new ones)
Unless you are prepared to transfer over all your old projects. (The schematic file system has changed enough that this will get a bit of a pain.)
2 Likes
Backup your projects first, just in case you get unusual problems
1 Like
And while backuping, make sure you also have the -cache libraries for the schematic symbols for each of your projects, and export the PCB footprints for all of your projects, and archive those with your projects.
3 Likes
The later is not really necessary as footprints are already stored inside the pcb_new file.
So if one wants to reuse this exact footprint later on you can still export it at that point in time.
1 Like
This topic was automatically closed 90 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.