The Plugin and Content Manager has been enabled by default and will start showing up in nightlies tomorrow.
There is work-in-progress documentation aimed at plugin/content creators on the dev docs site. Adventurous plugin authors can already start submitting their work to the official repository by following the guidelines there (take a look at the things already in the repository for examples).
There are some things to be aware of when testing:
Uninstalling a color theme using the PCM does not remove the theme. This is by design currently, but we’re looking at ways to improve this UX.
If you have a saved size of the KiCad project manager window (i.e. if you have run KiCad before), the saved size will not be updated now that this is turned on. So, the button for the PCM may appear off-screen and you may need to manually make the KiCad manager window larger. This should not affect new installs.
I am really happy to see PCM in KiCAD! However, I am worried about the plugins’ future in KiCAD 6. In the current nightly, there is API regression that affects several plugins in such a way they stop working. And without fixing the API, they will not be available for v6.
Could you provide updates on the Python API v6? I raised my concerns on the mailing list about a week ago, but I received no response from the developers (see https://lists.launchpad.net/kicad-developers/msg45379.html). The regression was reported about 9 months ago and we were asured that it will be fixed before release. However, I am really getting worried as it is 7 days until RC.
I have a question regarding PCM - what about plugins that have third-party dependencies (i.e., Python libraries). Does the installation process via PCM takes this into account? Currently, it doesn’t look so. Is it expected that the user will have to install such dependencies manually?
Could you start a new thread please? This one is really just for announcements and gets impossible to search if every new feature is discussed within it.
When KiCad V6 is released I think it’s a good idea to start a new topic for it and then only give a limited amount of people access to add posts.
Comments and questions can than easily be handled by starting a new thread and referring to the “list of new features and development news”
It’s been in for a bit but probably worth a mention: The routing corner style (Ctrl+/) now has 4 modes to cycle through: 45-degree, 45-degree with rounded corners, 90-degree, and 90-degree with rounded corners. The active corner style is shown in the message panel at the bottom while routing.
Sad news for those who have waited for the new python API. In Python API status in v6 we have been told that it’s not ready yet for v6 RC or relase and will be postponed. Existing plugins should be converted to the changed old style API to work with v6. There will be no eeschema API in v6. More details and discussion in the linked thread.
The router operates in a fixed-angle mode, not fixed-radius. You set the radius by where you click. Fixed-radius curves can be added using the Fillet Tracks post-processing operation.
As many of you have already seen, the development version has moved to 6.0RC1 phase.
Bug fixing will continue. The new version string is seen in some places. You will get the settings migration dialog, so there will be both 5.99 (old) and 6.0 (new) folders in the user specific kicad configuration. The configuration system is identical between the last 5.99 and first RC1 commit, but you can consider starting from scratch at this point to get a fresh feeling. If someone jumps in now from 5.1, I personally recommend starting from scratch.
Also if you download a “lite” build of nightly MSVC right now, you will end up missing libraries because it will install to \6.0\ but without any libraries because its “lite”.
tl;dr you can now invoke pip to install packages for kicad on windows easily without admin right escalation. pip packages get installed to C:\Users<username>\Documents\KiCad\6.0\3rdparty\python39\site-packages
Wayne has just tagged version 6.0.0-rc2. We believe this to be the version that will become v6 but due to having made a lot of bug fixes to the code since 6.0.0-rc1, we’d like to get more testing done before we finally tag 6.0.0 in case there are any final critical bugs that should be addressed before release.
We are now in a soft code freeze where only critical and high priority bug fixes will be addressed and only after code review by two other lead developers.
If no critical/high priority bugs are open on Monday morning (20-Dec), 6.0.0 will be tagged then and the packaging process can begin.
Please download the latest nightly and use it as much as you can, reporting any issues encountered (in particular any crashes or data loss) by going to Help->Report bug (you will need to create a gitlab account in order to report any issues).
