I would not advise a new user to install multiple versions.
V6 is years away, so not much of a problem
A couple of years ago v5 was years away and v4->v5 wasn’t a problem. Now it is. Those who are now new users will be old users when 6.0 will be released and have forgotten the environment variables which they set couple of years ago and will come here for advice because they have problems with environment variables set by 5.0. Therefore, just don’t set them. Let the KiCad’s own automatics set them as internal variables and edit them with the KiCad UI if needed. It works perfectly (after the bugfix, for typical default installtions) and is actually easier and more simple than using system environment variables.
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“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” 
In two years time, the stable version will have stepped several times from 5.0.0, so plenty of opportunity to fine tune the environment variable behaviour.
Right now the bigger headache will be new users who don’t even know what an E.V. is.
Hopefully someone will be inspired to extend the configuration tool for saving, exporting and importing these settings, once the V5 release panic is over. I don’t think that this would have to wait for V6
What configuration tool are you referring to?
RC3 tagged!
https://lists.launchpad.net/kicad-developers/msg36380.html
Does anyone know if the 01JUL18 nightly is the RC3?
Yes, the build r10601 is the first (and only, for now) rc3.
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R10601 (RC3) binaries for Windows can be found here (in case somebody doesn’t know):
http://downloads.kicad.org/windows/nightly/
In the dev mailing list Wayne told that 20th this month is the target date for tagging 5.0.0. But it depends on the bug situation. https://lists.launchpad.net/kicad-developers/msg36455.html
Edit: the “release date” could be 27th.
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If you are using a stable V4 release, and do not have a mission critical project in the works, then I suggest you grab a recent nightly of V5RC3. You will probably have a better transition experience if you read up a little bit on the forum about Environment Variables; this is not clearly going to be “fixed” at the release of V5 (as known at this time).
Many forum users have left the V4 stable for quite some time now, and have not had major issues. In fact, I personally have had far fewer issues with the nightlies than I have had with the “stable” V4 releases; disclaimer: there have been a small number of some specific nightlies where there were obvious problems that were fixed right quickly after.
If one has a solid version control system in place it remains my opinion that is best for most KiCad users (without a mission critical V4 project in the works) to migrate to V5 with the one of the current RC3 nightly builds.
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I have been running Debian Testing (Buster) for a spell now just to “test drive” RC2 and RC3.
I too have had good luck with them. This evening opted to move back to Stable while I await the official v5 release.
Being an Eagle CAD user (soon to be KiCAD user), I have been keeping an eye on this since January. I can’t wait to convert my 100 or projects to v5.
Very exciting news!
Cheers
Chris
I don’t expect any major changes before release now.
As always BACK UP YOUR PROJECT before any upgrade.
Strange. Yesterday (or the day before that depending on your time zone) Wayne wrote something about 20th of july.
Would really have been nice to have some warning time to be honest.
Anyone know the difference in meaning between “tagged” and “release” in context of the upversion to KiCad V5?
I am curious though - being a Debian user of both Stable and Testing, I wonder if v5 will make it to the Stable branch. Might anyone know that? I suppose I should ask the folks that actually packaged it for Sid/Testing to be certain but if someone here knows, would appreciate knowing.
Cheers
Chris
My guess would be only as a backport.
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Tagging something is a term from git. It means giving a specific commit a “name”. For kicad this means that this particular commit will be the source for the v5.0.0 release. The official release will come once the packagers and documentation guys finished their work. (Or in one week whatever comes first.)
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