On Fri, May 9, 2014 at 12:10 AM, Rick Walker <[email protected]> wrote: > Kicad is currently a moving target. The team doesn't provide "stable" > builds and the whole system is liable to blow up at any time. It > is even worse if one uses the "cloud-based" libraries which are under > dynamic mutation.
KiCad cannot be anything else than a moving target these days. There is just too much going on to consider a stable release right now. FWIW, we at CERN do have the concept of a lightweight stable release (without backports) in the list of things we'd like to see in the project in the future. We believe that it will help KiCad in a number of ways, including Mac support, which has been discussed recently. Various people will see their work become easier, assuming that we expect a certain (to be defined) degree of quality from them only (or mostly) for stable releases. For example: - People whose task is to ensure KiCad builds and installs seamlessly in GNU/Linux, Mac and Windows. - People writing documentation. - People testing. - People working on libraries. It's nice to have a clear objective and a lightweight stable release will help in that. There has been concern in the past that a stable release would result in less testing of the non-stable code. We need to find ways to ensure that the amount of actual testing goes up, not down. One way would be to have a testing team. If people really see value in a stable release, some of them should be willing to contribute some effort to cope with the potentially negative consequences it could have in some areas of the project. Regarding your other comments on attitude and such -- and this is not meant as an answer but just some random thoughts triggered by reading you -- I have not had any problems disagreeing on particular points with any of the current core developers. Our discussions have always been based on respecting people and their points of view, and we have found that respecting others and contributing code helps a lot in gaining respect. I am not saying this is the magic solution to everything. Just that, in my opinion, this has played a key role in making our participation in KiCad a very pleasurable experience so far. My two cents. Cheers, Javier _______________________________________________ Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers Post to : [email protected] Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
