Hi, So while developing and setting up a new system, it is not really clear to me how to set up all the paths. Right now I can't seem to find a simple way, only something that feels a bit too complicated.
1) Installing libraries (I do _not_ use the git-plugin but rather prefer local installation) To get a fresh setup of libraries, I am running scripts/library-repos-install.sh I am doing that with a custom path (WORKING_TREE=/usr/local/share/kicad) under $WORKING_DIR, it creates library-repos, under which it unpacks $WORKING_TREE/library-repos/kicad-library with schematic symbols and 3d packages and unpacks all pretty directories in there as well: $WORKING_TREE/library-repos/*.pretty so far so good. 2) setting the environment variables Now running a freshly compiled KiCad does of course not find the libraries. In fact, without any environment variables present, it apparently assumes these: KIGITHUB=https://github.com/KiCad KISYS3DMOD=/usr/local/modules/packages3d KISYSMOD=/usr/local/modules (which it writes to ~/.config/kicad/kcad_common). This seems to be bogus to me; I can imagine that it extracts that from the compile PREFIX somehow, but I'd expect it to append a share/kicad or something to it. After copying the fp-lib-table and setting the enviroment variable as suggested in the script cp $WORKING_TREES/library-repos/kicad-library/template/fp-lib-table.for-pretty ~/.config/kicad/fp-lib-table export KISYSMOD=$WORKING_TREES/library-repos .. eeschema still does not find the libraries. for that, I have found that I can set KICAD to that directory export KICAD=$WORKING_TREES/library-repos/kicad-library Now, 3D viewing _still_ does not work. Yet another environment variable has to be set export KISYS3DMOD=$WORKING_TREES/library-repos/kicad-library/modules/packages3d 3) Findings Kicad only works with the libraries with a little of manual-work. Three environment variables have to be set to get going. Given WORKING_TREES as the chosen location in the install script, these are the environment variables: export KICAD=$WORKING_TREES/library-repos/kicad-library export KISYSMOD=$WORKING_TREES/library-repos export KISYS3DMOD=$WORKING_TREES/library-repos/kicad-library/modules/packages3d 4) Question Am I am doing something wrong here, or is this really needed this way ? 5) Suggestion I know I have not been actively developing recently, so I can't really complain. But I would like to see it working this way: - We have a defined standard layout of how libraries are checked out/installed locally. Say in $PREFIX/share/kicad. The install script does already something like that, so that could be the defined standard way (though some re-structuring might be useful). - There is only _one_ environment variable to be set, pointing to the root of this directory (KICAD_SYSTEM_LIBS or something) - This environment variable is pre-set to $PREFIX/share/kicad (or to the eqivalent path on where typically data files reside on other platforms). Would this be a good goal before a new, stable release ? I think it will help users and make software-packagers happy. Cheers, Henner. _______________________________________________ Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers Post to : [email protected] Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
