Post-v5 new features and development news

Ah, OK. Thanks for the explanation.

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.

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Well, in theory it will migrate. But your mileage may vary. i.e. you may find your library tables broken https://gitlab.com/kicad/code/kicad/-/issues/9660

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”.

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We were already informed about the python API (see couple of posts upwards). Now Seth sent a more “official” message to the developers mailing list: https://www.mail-archive.com/kicad-developers@lists.launchpad.net/msg39824.html. Especially plugin developers should read it.

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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

and get loaded by kicad just fine

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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.

See wayne’s announcement here: https://www.mail-archive.com/kicad-developers@lists.launchpad.net/msg39856.html

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).

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Thanks to everyone that made this possible!

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Christmas came earlier:

Thank you developers, and have a nice holidays! :))

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Presumably “Testing” will soon become pre 6.0.1 and “Nightly” 6.99

Time for a post-v6 thread :slight_smile:

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Gotta be close to being released now. :partying_face:

Fair warning. It’ll be a few days before the stable builds are available.

So I should stop hitting F5? :grin:

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6.9.9 already :slight_smile:

Application: KiCad

Version: 6.9.9-unknown-0d1748c91c~144~ubuntu20.04.1, release build

Am I correct in assuming that this discussion will present a notice when 6.0 is posted as the stable release? Whoever replies next to this discussion will have the honor of post number 400.

In 10 months, @JeffYoung will be telling people you better download 6.99 because it is more stable than v6.1.x :smiley:

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I don’t see much attention to 6.99 for a few months

Looks like builds for Ubuntu are all completed and now available (Though not yet officially announced)

ii  kicad                                      6.0.0-1-202112231423+d3dd2cf0fa~116~ubuntu20.04.1 amd64        Electronic schematic and PCB design software
ii  kicad-demos                                6.0.0-1-202112231423+d3dd2cf0fa~116~ubuntu20.04.1 all          Common files used by kicad
ii  kicad-footprints                           6.0.0-1-202112231422+3ea7895b0~11~ubuntu20.04.1   all          Kicad footprints (modules)
ii  kicad-libraries                            6.0.0-1-202112231422+8~ubuntu20.04.1              all          meta-package for dep to all KiCad libraries (symbols, footprints, templates and 3D models)
ii  kicad-packages3d                           6.0.0-1-202112231425+e607286d~9~ubuntu20.04.1     all          Kicad packages3d (3d models for footprints)
ii  kicad-symbols                              6.0.0-1-202112231425+275f22eb~7~ubuntu20.04.1     all          Kicad symbols (schematic)
ii  kicad-templates                            6.0.0-1-202112231423+3a422b5~9~ubuntu20.04.1      all          Kicad templates

We won’t officially announce until Windows and macOS builds are up.

There’s actually a backlog of merge requests and other work waiting for 6.99…so it’ll quickly become what everyone wants to use anyway. lol.

I am interested when fileformat changes kicks in? I see bunch of commits, in v6.99, sime of them are related to graphic objects, so wondering if is it safe to use now?