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CERN BE-CO-HT contribution to KiCad
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Buildpns

Last edited by Maciej Sumiński Jul 01, 2014
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KiCad product branch build instructions

There is an official install script available on the KiCad website, but it is currently hardcoded to download & build revision 4756, which is tagged as 'pre-kiway'. The tag name indicates that it is the last commit before an introduction of big changes to KiCad. The changes are still in progress and may cause some troubles every now and then (more details).
If you want to run the bleeding-edge KiCad, you have two possible ways. One is to modify the install script, so it fetches the newest version. Still, sometimes you may find problems using the script, therefore here you can find alternative, short instructions for getting the newest version to work. Another difference is the manual below setups your environment to use local footprint libraries instead of ones stored in Github.
If you meet any problems - please let me know. I would rather make KiCad easy to build for everyone than force you to use tricks.

Prerequisites

The following tools can be easily obtained from any distro package repository:

- cmake >= 2.8

- bzr & bzrtools

- wxwidgets-dev or wxgtk-dev >= 2.8

- libbz2

- cairo-dev

- glew-dev

- ssl-dev
- git

For deb based systems:

$ sudo apt-get install bzr bzrtools build-essential cmake libbz2-dev \
                       libcairo2-dev libglew-dev libssl-dev libwxgtk2.8-dev git

For rpm based systems (not tested by me):

$ sudo yum groupinstall "Development Tools"
$ sudo yum install bzr bzrtools bzip2-libs bzip2-devel cmake cairo-devel glew-devel wxGTK-devel openssl-devel git

Building

Fresh bazaar requires your credentials:

$ bzr whoami "Name Surname <name.surname@mail.com>"

Getting the source code & building:

$ bzr checkout --lightweight lp:kicad
$ mkdir kicad/build
$ cd kicad/build
$ cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
$ make -j<number of CPU cores>
<get yourself a cup of tea>
$ sudo make install

KiCad is now installed and ready to run.

Libraries

You may need a few libraries to start messing with hardware design (or you may draw them yourself, then skip the part below). I recommend you installing those, so you will not waste time drawing symbols for resistors & capacitors or 0603/0805/etc. footprints.

Symbols

Optionally, you may set up eeschema to you a custom folder instead of installing the library.

$ bzr checkout --lightweight lp:~kicad-product-committers/kicad/library kicad-library
$ mkdir kicad-library/build
$ cd kicad-library/build
$ cmake ..
$ sudo make install

Footprints

$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/johnbeard/kicad_pretties.git footprints
$ cd footprints
$ ./initRepo.sh
$ git submodule init
$ git submodule update
$ cp /usr/local/share/kicad/template/fp-lib-table.for-pretty ~/fp-lib-table

Now you have to set enviromental variables (though I recommend using /etc/profile or equivalent):

$ export KISYSMOD=/path/to/repo/fetched/in/the/last/step

Documentation

$ bzr checkout --lightweight lp:~kicad-developers/kicad/doc

You may install it in a similar manner to symbol libraries, but these files are not critical to be placed in a specific location. Just downlaod the contents and store it wherever you like (read that as well! there are a lot of useful hints inside).

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