I posted this in another thread, but wanted to re raise this question.
I am running Windows 10 (64 bit). I install Kicad using the online binary installers. Since after 10 Feb (r7628) I have had very slow loading of my legacy schematics. The load time has gone from almost instantaneous to at times as much at 45 seconds. This issue seems related to a new library parser. The parser seems to be fixed, but the load time for my schematics is so long as to make the program unusable.
For now I have had to revert to r7628. Has anyone else experienced this? Or am I seeing something local to my own machine?
This is known - the library loading code has been totally rewritten, and the new code needs some optimization. It’s not unbearably slow on most machines though, just a bit irritating. Maybe I’ll spend some time profiling it this week…
My schematics tend to be rather large (several hierarchical sheets) and several hundred components. Here is the info on my machine. I am running GTX 960M and Intel HD graphic support.
Mine too, but mine have been sane. Any chance you could share a project with me? That system is fairly similar to my laptop, and my projects are also quite large, so I’d expect similar performance.
It doesn’t need a rollback. Just don’t use nightlies if it’s too slow. Nightlies exist to get new, possibly buggy code out for testing by a wider audience of people willing to put up with new, possibly buggy code - retracting such a large set of changes to only be seen by one or two developers while they are optimized is really not a good idea, sure it’ll result in fewer annoyances for users of nighlies for that period, but it’ll also mean the code gets less testing and may be less stable by the time it makes it into the final 5.0 release.
If you require dependable software, use the actual released versions.
(Edit: I now realize you may have just meant rolling back your own installed build rather than reverting the change in the codebase. Apologies if so. Point stands for everyone though - nightlies are going to be unstable, so please avoid them if you need reliability, it’ll save yourself a lot of headaches I know the downloads page really doesn’t do much to explain that they really aren’t something that should be used by most users.)
Ooh that actually made it into the nightlies? Pfft, shows how much attention I’ve been paying to the PCB editor lately. I’m going to have to try that out
Same for me. I am a big fan of the Kicad developers. In general, I would say that what they do is phenomenal. It is a great product. I have no doubt this will be worked out. In the mean time, I will either live with the delays or roll back. It is going to take a lot more than this to dampen my enthusiasm for the project. A big public thank you to all who contribute.
I recall reports of some other problems that seem to have appeared about that time. What is the recent situation? Have these things been corrected in nightly builds from the last few days?
(I am NOT complaining, in any way. I have been away for a few days, and curious to work with some of the recently-added features . . . . but not if they are known to have shortcomings that are being worked out. I can stand back and refrain from annoying the developers with comments about known situations, if they are still working to improve them.
I see that the file-size of the Windows installation package increased by about 10% over the last 2 days, but I can’t tell whether that’s an ominous omen or a hopeful sign. I’m presently using nightly Rev 7628 from 10 Feb. )
Nightly builds are not releases, they are test builds. If you use them, you should expect problems and monitor the following sources of information in order to find information:
For what it’s worth, I am using the nightly builds. I find that it helps to strip the unused schematic symbol libraries from the project symbol library list. This speeds things up much. I do have a snapshot that I can revert back to if necessary. So far I haven’t found any show stoppers.
