Re: [Kicad-developers] Current development status?
On Sat, Mar 20, 2021 at 8:02 AM RigoLigo RLC wrote: > I have a few questions about the current KiCad development. > > 1. new features after feature freeze? > > Most significantly, the separate icon set. While everyone is looking > forward to having this small feature, it's still kinda offending the term > feature "freeze". > On the issue of the new icon set, we explicitly waited for feature freeze before starting this work specifically to allow our design team the full menu list and feature set that needed icons. I expect future explicit icon cleanup to follow the same pattern. > 3. Development iteration... > > Currently KiCad will push big version leaps for all the features > developers add into it. I know it's got reasons (difficulty of maintaining > two branches, plugin API consistency) but a big leap requires a LONG wait. > For OSS users this might not be a big problem but in Chinese community > there are companies that use KiCad as alternatives. > KiCad is still, primarily, community-driven. We are working toward supporting a full-time development team but this requires the business users of KiCad--who depend on its development for their livelihoods--to step up and support the development team. If any companies are interested in discussing how they can help speed up development times, my phone number and contact information are listed below. Regards- Seth -- [image: KiCad Services Corporation Logo] Seth Hillbrand *Lead Developer* +1-530-302-5483 Long Beach, CA www.kipro-pcb.comi...@kipro-pcb.com ___ Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers Post to : kicad-developers@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
Re: [Kicad-developers] Current development status?
On 3/20/21 11:02 AM, RigoLigo RLC wrote: > I have a few questions about the current KiCad development. > > 1. new features after feature freeze? > > Most significantly, the separate icon set. While everyone is looking > forward to having this small feature, it's still kinda offending the > term feature "freeze". Though we weren't at string freeze, new features > are already annoying enough to translators. Are we getting other > features before V6 launch? Yes. There is one major (the new Python API) and a few minor exceptions still outstanding. The new icon set code was on the feature freeze exception list maintained by the lead development team. I believe I mentioned that there were a few exceptions that were outstanding when I made the feature freeze announcement. If I didn't, my bad. The string freeze will be announced as soon as all of the exceptions have been committed and the code base has stabilized. > > 2. unresolved mysterious crashes > > Many (or most) critical/high priority issues are unresolved crashes, > usually hard to reproduce, without need-info tag. Are they slowing down > the version iteration? I mean, KiCad crashes are not new, not to mention > those that are hard to tackle. Reducing data loss with autosave and such > would be enough for current status of KiCad IMO. Of course crashes that > have known reasons must be fixed. But what are we going to do with these > mysterious crash issues? Wait till they're resolved before we launch RC1? All known reproducible crash bugs must be fixed before RC1 can happen but yes hard to reproduce bugs are always going to slow things down. > > 3. Development iteration... > > Currently KiCad will push big version leaps for all the features > developers add into it. I know it's got reasons (difficulty of > maintaining two branches, plugin API consistency) but a big leap > requires a LONG wait. For OSS users this might not be a big problem but > in Chinese community there are companies that use KiCad as alternatives. > They dare not to use nightlies(even it's stable, it's not a stable > release, and files are incompatible), but are still eager to have nice > new features. Will we get more frequent updates like 6.1 6.2 adding > small features step by step instead of doing all the things in one > milestone? There most likely will not be point version releases but the lead development team has discussed smaller change sets and possibly an annual release schedule to lower the time between releases so that is a likely possibility. - Wayne > > I'd like to know from you guys. > > Rigo > > ___ > Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers > Post to : kicad-developers@lists.launchpad.net > Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers > More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp > ___ Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers Post to : kicad-developers@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
Re: [Kicad-developers] Current development status?
Hi Rigo, here's my thoughts, other devs might have more to add: > Most significantly, the separate icon set. While everyone is looking forward to having this small feature, it's still kinda offending the term feature "freeze". Though we weren't at string freeze, new features are already annoying enough to translators. Are we getting other features before V6 launch? Several features were marked as feature freeze exceptions by the lead development team, as they were deemed important features that were in development and were being planned around for V6. Support for dark color themes was included here as lack of it makes KiCad pretty unusable in desktop environments with dark window colors. There are two other new features that are on the list of exceptions but aren't in yet: - Arc support in polygons - New Python API > Though we weren't at string freeze, new features are already annoying enough to translators The development team does not consider feature freeze to mean string freeze, which is why we have that separate concept. I certainly appreciate the efforts of translators who work to keep up with development, but since we are not at a string freeze, I think it would also be acceptable if some translators wanted to just wait for the string freeze so they didn't have to possibly do work twice. Of course our use of Weblate now makes this a little easier. > Many (or most) critical/high priority issues are unresolved crashes, usually hard to reproduce, without need-info tag. Are they slowing down the version iteration? Some of these may be missing a needed "need-info" tag. Generally, crash bugs in KiCad fall into two categories: ones that we can easily reproduce, which are generally fixed very quickly, and ones that we cannot reproduce. The latter are still important to fix if we have evidence that they are caused by a KiCad problem (some hard-to-reproduce crash bugs can be caused by various other system configuration things that are outside our control). Generally, as long as the reporter is able to consistently reproduce the crash bug in a supported environment, we will hold the release until all such bugs are fixed, but there may be exceptions. If there are crash bugs that can't be reproduced by anyone (even outside the development team) reliably enough to understand what causes them, it might be a different story. I think each situation has to be analyzed independently. > Will we get more frequent updates like 6.1 6.2 adding small features step by step instead of doing all the things in one milestone? Currently the plan is to stick with the major version numbering for new features (i.e. going straight to 7.0) but to do fewer big features per major version release. We would all like to see more frequent releases. -Jon On Sat, Mar 20, 2021 at 11:02 AM RigoLigo RLC wrote: > I have a few questions about the current KiCad development. > > 1. new features after feature freeze? > > Most significantly, the separate icon set. While everyone is looking > forward to having this small feature, it's still kinda offending the term > feature "freeze". Though we weren't at string freeze, new features are > already annoying enough to translators. Are we getting other features > before V6 launch? > > 2. unresolved mysterious crashes > > Many (or most) critical/high priority issues are unresolved crashes, > usually hard to reproduce, without need-info tag. Are they slowing down the > version iteration? I mean, KiCad crashes are not new, not to mention those > that are hard to tackle. Reducing data loss with autosave and such would be > enough for current status of KiCad IMO. Of course crashes that have known > reasons must be fixed. But what are we going to do with these mysterious > crash issues? Wait till they're resolved before we launch RC1? > > 3. Development iteration... > > Currently KiCad will push big version leaps for all the features > developers add into it. I know it's got reasons (difficulty of maintaining > two branches, plugin API consistency) but a big leap requires a LONG wait. > For OSS users this might not be a big problem but in Chinese community > there are companies that use KiCad as alternatives. They dare not to use > nightlies(even it's stable, it's not a stable release, and files are > incompatible), but are still eager to have nice new features. Will we get > more frequent updates like 6.1 6.2 adding small features step by step > instead of doing all the things in one milestone? > > I'd like to know from you guys. > > Rigo > ___ > Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers > Post to : kicad-developers@lists.launchpad.net > Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers > More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp > ___ Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers Post to : kicad-developers@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~
[Kicad-developers] Current development status?
I have a few questions about the current KiCad development. 1. new features after feature freeze? Most significantly, the separate icon set. While everyone is looking forward to having this small feature, it's still kinda offending the term feature "freeze". Though we weren't at string freeze, new features are already annoying enough to translators. Are we getting other features before V6 launch? 2. unresolved mysterious crashes Many (or most) critical/high priority issues are unresolved crashes, usually hard to reproduce, without need-info tag. Are they slowing down the version iteration? I mean, KiCad crashes are not new, not to mention those that are hard to tackle. Reducing data loss with autosave and such would be enough for current status of KiCad IMO. Of course crashes that have known reasons must be fixed. But what are we going to do with these mysterious crash issues? Wait till they're resolved before we launch RC1? 3. Development iteration... Currently KiCad will push big version leaps for all the features developers add into it. I know it's got reasons (difficulty of maintaining two branches, plugin API consistency) but a big leap requires a LONG wait. For OSS users this might not be a big problem but in Chinese community there are companies that use KiCad as alternatives. They dare not to use nightlies(even it's stable, it's not a stable release, and files are incompatible), but are still eager to have nice new features. Will we get more frequent updates like 6.1 6.2 adding small features step by step instead of doing all the things in one milestone? I'd like to know from you guys. Rigo ___ Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers Post to : kicad-developers@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
