First of all, rc2 has not yet been released.
And even if it is released it is not a stable release.
The rc series releases are so called release candidates. They are development builds. What sets them apart from nightly is that there is exactly one commit tagged as rc1 (or rc2, …)
The rc series can be seen as milestone markers. (Bug reports are connected to them.) So every rc tag has a set of bugs connected to it that must be fixed before the tag is set.
Sadly there is no way to easily install rc1. Maybe rc2 will get a more official release that will allow users to run that particular release more easily.
What you really run is the nightly build from sometime after the rc1 tag has been added to the source repo. What sets nightly builds right now apart from nightlies from a year ago is that kicad is in feature freeze for quite some time now.
If i remember the announcement correctly, RC2 will be the string freeze release (after that no graphical interface changes will be allowed. This will allow the guys from the documentation team to update their docu)
Rene_Poschl1d thanks for your replay.
One thing that absolutely understood from your info is that before version finishes RCXX cycle developers are unable to write a manual. Hopefully this will happen as soon as possible.
The part I misunderstood is that my nightly build now says “5.0.0-rc2-dev-756-gxxxxxxx) release build” . That is May 18.
If understand correctly this is not the official RC2 but just unofficial rc2 given to nightly build ? and what this release build stands for.?
Anyway looks that it it only a litle time until we have the thing oficialy out and developers start writing or finishing the manual
Meanwhile I am working with V5 and hoping my system will not crash. I am making small boards at this time.
As far as I sow from another post the old “OPEN GL” mode is done now with Modern toolset accelerated -F11 and that is working fine (from Preferences) .
My method of working is to follow V4 manual see what is applicable in V5 and read everything I see posted here (or elsewhere) about V5.
Any post from a guy that discovers something will be grate help at this moment of “darkens” concerning designing with kicad V5
Anyway I am not coming back to V4. I do not have the time to learn things that in some days or weeks will be PAST.
I am always looking forward for good news…
Creating a version number system is difficult when there’s a version control system with small commits. The version numbers are based on some tag plus the git commit. KiCad developers chose the system where there is the next planned version number (in this case 5.0.0 rc2 where rc2 means a release candidate version before 5.0.0), then “dev” which here means it’s a development version leading to the beforementioned version, then some release number (I don’t know what it means TBH), then gxxxxx means the specific unambiguous git commit.
Maybe it would have been better to choose another system, for example “previous_released_version+gxxxxx” where “+” would have meant, well, previous_released_version plus some git commits. It would have been less ambiguous in my opinion. At least it wouldn’t have lead people to hastily interpret it meaning they have the 5.0.0rc2 version at hand which actually hasn’t been released yet.
It looks complicated but one thing is for sure. I do not have RC2 in my hand now and I have to leave with it waiting and hoping for the official release.
Than you guys for helping me on this
If don’t remember if the version number system was changed or is this due to Wayne forgetting the push the tag before changing the version number code, but the latest version number (today’s nightly build on Windows) is 5.0.0-rc2-37-ga8db21319, and rc2 has been tagged. So, maybe we don’t have as confusing version numbers as I thought.
As for other news, milestone rc3 has been added for development purposes, but it’s still unclear whether rc3 will be tagged later or if it will be directly 5.0.0. Anyways, the situation looks good, but until now it always has been longer than expected… I’m still not as pessimistic as bobc was above, but version 5 certainly wasn’t ready for quarter 1 of 2018.
There are no new news from the developers. Here’s the related bug list: https://launchpad.net/kicad/+milestone/5.0.0-rc3. There are no critical bugs which are actually planned to be fixed for the next tag. Until now new critical bugs (mostly crashes) have emerged and and have then been fixed all the time. That seems to be the only reason why 5.0 hasn’t been released.
In my opinion it would be better if you all would take the nightly builds and start using them. That way the looming crashes and data losses would be found and fixed faster. Well, this opinion needs quite many smileys…
But seriously, I anticipate seeing a rush of many new bug reports after 5.0 has been released. It would be better to catch them before the release, but if it’s not released, people won’t use it. Catch 22.
It seems we are really getting close. Wayne just announced that rc3 will be tagged shortly. If no major bug is found the release might come sometime in the week between 9th and 15th of June.
More details see: https://lists.launchpad.net/kicad-developers/msg36374.html
RC3 released a few hours ago. I have been standing by waiting before jumping in so I can learn it once, not twice.
So now I am in a position that I need to learn in a hurry how to install it. Total newbie.
Could somebody write a concise instruction to install, at least in Windows (mine is Win7)? I saw a post that showed default directory locations in Program Files\Kicad. Do I extract the whole archive and place it there ?
Maybe this should be the start of a new thread?
Not released, just tagged. Release will take in a few weeks.
If you are champing at the bit, the latest nightly is as close as you can get for now, download the 30 June build from http://downloads.kicad.org/windows/nightly/. To install, just run the exe.
If releasing rc3 takes weeks then v5 will be out before there is a package for rc3 I suspect the operating systems that get a package for rc3 will have it within a few days.
