Preferred Linux Kicad build environment?

Software
1

Is there a preferred Linux Kicad build environment? I assume Linux since I personally use primarily Xubuntu 16.04, since it is the latest LTS. Are there any known build or dependency issues if building on Ubuntu 16.04? If so, is there a recommended version?

2

I built 4.0.7 on slackware x86-64 12.1, and i am trying to migrate to 10.1, so i hope the develop team could have a consideration.

c++11, does anybody know the benifits of it?

3

Why are you backing up from12.1 to 10.1?

4

A quick glance at the developer docs at http://docs.kicad.org/doxygen/md_Documentation_development_compiling.html didn’t give much info on this. I forwarded your question to the developer mailing list and will post the answers here.

5

As far as I know, people use many different distributions without any problems. The only issues I know are related to wxWidgets built on GTK3 [1, 2]. Be sure your compiler is C++11 compatible, but it should not be a problem with any recent distribution release.

6

Maybe smaller, faster, i guess.

7

Here are the first answers from the develeoper mail list:

https://lists.launchpad.net/kicad-developers/msg30319.html:

No, it should work in any Linux distro where the requirements can be
met. Requiring people to install a different distribution than they are
used to would be a barrier to entry.

If there is a problem on a particular setup we want to know about it, so
we can investigate. If the build instructions don’t cover a particular
distribution, we want to know about it and improve the documentation.

The only thing that may be problematic are really old releases, but
16.04 is certainly not too old.

https://lists.launchpad.net/kicad-developers/msg30320.html:

I test installing the dependencies from the package manager, and then
downloading the KiCad source and compiling it on a clean 16.04 machine
every day and have been for a few months.

If they start to fail, I’ll poke the list.

8

Thanks for the quick replies. I am anxious to get started and hopefully contribute in some small way.

9

I don’t know if it is still the case but Sage Math used to run a live distro on Debain even though it wasn’t supported at Debian at the time. Sage changed to much for them to be bothered trying to keep up with the Debian requirements for the ‘stable’ release. I’m not sure if a live release makes sense for KiCAD. Given the library structure it could though. It ensures that someone test driving has the best experience possible.

Choosing a distro right now is hard if you don’t compile your own though. Debian is a little behind and Ubuntu jumped the gun and was a little ahead. sigh…

10

I invite you to browse the developers documentation. You do not need it know it by heart, but it might contain some helpful hints. It is a good idea sign up to the dev mailing list as well, as this is the place to discuss changes and ask for explanations. Let’s keep kicad.info as the user forum.

11

I use and co maintain Kicad on openSUSE, currently Leap:42.3 the latest LTS. You must make sure that wxWidgets 3 is built with the same gcc version as you use to build Kicad. We still use GTK2 wxWidgets, if built with GTK3 it still has issues although I haven’t looked for a while.

12

The category where this is posted (Software) on kicad.info specifically states “This category is meant for discussing the software itself, specifically how to build it from source, problems with versions and other quirks you are finding with the software.”

1 Like
13

Sure, I have no objections to this. I suggested switching to the mailing list, as the subject is slowly drifting towards KiCad development, not the build process and related problems.

14

I can build 4.0.6 from srpm and dailies in Fedora without any issues once all of the dependencies are pulled in. Fedora has a wx3gtk-compat library that is built against GTK2 that is used when compiling v4.