Hello, Kicadians:
I have stepped away from KiCad for awhile and now that I am back to it for another project, I have noticed that there is a new ‘release’ version out there.
I am not rushing to update to 5.1.5 because the bug fixes seem to have released more bugs.
That being said (and I have yet to find a definitive answer to this, anywhere), if I am upgrading from 5.1.4 to 5.1.5 (or a similar step-wise change), Should I completely un-install the old version first (and reboot etc) before running the new Installation package? Or, is the new installation sophisticated enough to only make those changes to the existing 5.1 installation necessary for the upgrade?
It should be safe to just install. I do it all the time with testing builds (nightly builds for 5.1 series) and more rarely with stable releases.
5.1.6 will be released sooner or later, hopefully sooner, and won’t have some annoying bugs which are in 5.1.5. If you are using 5.1.4 and are happy with it or at least can use it, you don’t need 5.1.5 and can skip to 5.1.6 after a while.
5.1.5 has fewer bugs than 5.1.4. If a release was found to have introduced a critical new bug it would be replaced with a fix urgently. This has happened in the past.
Pre 5.1.6 in “Testing” is even better and what I use for my real work.
On the Windows builds newer releases also come with library updates. These are both new items and corrections to existing ones.
Oh and while we are at it…does one of the Bugs in the V5.1.4 have anything to do with the Net assignments? I am trying to change Net settings (I admit, this is new territory for me) and some of the changes seem to work but they are not fully promoted to the the autorouter data-exchange files used by Freerouter (*.ses and *.dsn).
Project files yes
Custom libraries - these should be in your own /user/yourname directory structure, in which case they will be safe. A common beginner mistake is to modify the packaged libraries or place a custom library in the same directory as the packaged library. These get wiped.
I don’t use the 3rd party autorouter, so I am not sure about your second question. The list of bugs fixed in every point release is rather long.
Thanks. I am afraid that I am guilty of the beginner’s mistake of putting things in the same directory (in the form of a sub-folder)…will have to correct that! From what you are saying, then, when the upgrading is performed the Installer does not trace the Paths in the Environment Variables file to hunt down and erase or over-write all the file folders therein…(the chant of Dr. Who’s Daleks is heard here…“Exterminate!” …“Exterminate!”)