KiCad 6 is coming! (has arrived!!)

[nigelwright7557]

Please don't feed the Trolls.

If I could have got it to do what I want I would have used it but I cant.
I couldnt even complete a track it wouldnt put down last segment.

I think it needs a bit longer to mature before it is usable.

[Monkeh]

Who let Nigel out of his room again?

[LazyJack]

Well. Many of us succeeded in drawing the last segment in a track, or even so, the last segment of a huge number of tracks and that resulted in having a manufactured PCB.
So I'm not sure now where to look for the problem.

[madires]

The problem is that KiCad is Nigel's competitor.

[benst]

I think I need a bit longer to mature before I am usable.

There, fixed it.

[phil from seattle]

Chris Gammell did an interview with Kicad developer Jon Evans about KiCad 6 development a couple days ago.  It isn't on youtube but can be accessed here.  You may need to download it to watch. Interesting insight into the design philosophy.  It's a bit "chit-chatty" but still has a decent SNR.

[phil from seattle]

I think I need a bit longer to mature before I am usable.

There, fixed it.

Feedin' the Troll, again...   

[twospoons]

So I'm not sure now where to look for the problem.

I would start by looking between the keyboard and the chair.

[ebastler]

Things have gone quiet regarding the KiCad 6 release. I am aware of the team's "it' will be ready when it's ready" approach and appreciate that it is not a commercial product with a committed schedule. But weren't they hoping to release 6.0 sometime during the first half of the year?

A quick web search did not find any recent updates or discussions. Does anyone have further insights into the current status and plans?

[retiredfeline]

There are threads on the KiCad forum on this, e.g.: https://forum.kicad.info/t/version-6-release-plan/30013/62

Some people feel 5.99 is stable enough for daily use. Myself I prefer to wait, as you cannot go back to 5.1 after the files have been converted.

[Karel]

I must admit I'm a bit disappointed as well but I don't blame the developers.
I prefer they polish it as much as possible and release it when they feel confident.
I hate agile software development...

[thinkfat]

I must admit I'm a bit disappointed as well but I don't blame the developers.
I prefer they polish it as much as possible and release it when they feel confident.
I hate agile software development...

"It's ready when it's ready" is not agile. Agile means that you have a backlog of tasks that will get you to the release. Each sprint the backlog gets shorter and by the speed of the burn-down you can usually tell when it'll be ready.

But if the backlog doesn't get shorter or even grows, it's not agile, it's a death march.

[I wanted a rude username]

Some people feel 5.99 is stable enough for daily use.

Most of the KiCad users I know have switched to 5.99 nightlies for new boards. I've completed two projects using it ... really enjoying the mitred tracks, layer opacity control, and less recalcitrant routing. Will probably keep old projects in KiCad 5 format indefinitely though (or unless a major change is required).

[rf-messkopf]

Things have gone quiet regarding the KiCad 6 release. I am aware of the team's "it' will be ready when it's ready" approach and appreciate that it is not a commercial product with a committed schedule. But weren't they hoping to release 6.0 sometime during the first half of the year?

A quick web search did not find any recent updates or discussions. Does anyone have further insights into the current status and plans?

On GitLab the target date for the 6.0.0 release candidate 1 is shown as Nov. 30, 2021. Recently I submitted a couple of bug reports and they were fixed promptly in the nightlies.

Currently there are 49 open issues with the 6.0.0-rc1 milestone.

[bitwelder]

Fresh announcement from Wayne:

https://lists.launchpad.net/kicad-developers/msg45375.html

The lead development team has agreed on a version 6 release schedule as follows:

- String freeze November 1.
- Tag RC1 on November 15.
- All repos frozen on December 14.
- Tag all repos with 6.0.0 on December 15.
- 6.0.0 release announcement December 31 (maybe the day before Christmas
  just for fun).
- Branch V6 and open master for new feature development on January 1.

[thinkfat]

That is excellent news!

[ebastler]

Good news indeed. Although if one reads the remaining lines of that announcement, it becomes clear that we might not want to hold our breath for a Jan 1st release: 

Our goal is to stick to that as closely as possible [...]
Hopefully the version 6 release will go reasonably smoothly and we can get started on version 7 in 2022.

[james_s]

I'll be curious to have a look when it's ready. I'm still using 2013-07-07, I tried 5.1.0 a while back but experienced a lot of problems with the rendering and trying to convert existing designs just made a big mess so I rolled back.

[Bassman59]

I'll be curious to have a look when it's ready. I'm still using 2013-07-07, I tried 5.1.0 a while back but experienced a lot of problems with the rendering and trying to convert existing designs just made a big mess so I rolled back.

Jeez, they're up to 5.10 now -- and that's much improved over 5.1.0. And the old 2013? Yikes. Upgrade, man, upgrade!

[retiredfeline]

Jeez, they're up to 5.10 now -- and that's much improved over 5.1.0. And the old 2013? Yikes. Upgrade, man, upgrade!

Actually it's 5.1.10, i.e. the same 5.1 series as 5.1.0. And 5.1.11 has just been released.

[Bassman59]

Jeez, they're up to 5.10 now -- and that's much improved over 5.1.0. And the old 2013? Yikes. Upgrade, man, upgrade!

Actually it's 5.1.10, i.e. the same 5.1 series as 5.1.0. And 5.1.11 has just been released.

You are correct! Dunno why I screwed that up, especially since I could've just launched Kicad and looked at the "About" dialog.

The advice about "upgrade, man, upgrade!" remains!

[retiredfeline]

It seems 5.1.11 was short lived as they found a regression so didn't even appear for some platforms so 5.1.12 is imminent.

[Cerebus]

As I've said before, it's worth at least trying the current nightlies (5.99, the work in progress for 6).

Many of the things that were show stoppers for me in earlier versions (mostly really dumb UI issues) have gone away. To the point that whereas I was quite a detractor of KiCad pre 5.99 I'm quite happy to use it now and recommend it to people who don't have access to one of the big money packages. Yes, there are still things that could be better done, there are still some egregious UI issues (e.g. grossly inconsistent tabbing orders) but it's useable whereas before I didn't believe that it was. I've cranked out two 4 layer boards and two 2 layer boards with it without problems.

It still lacks features that some of the big packages have, but on the other hand it crashes less often than some of the big packages. The UI could still use a whole lot of work, but it at least now has some consistency rather than being the ragbag it was before. If you're using a older version I would strongly recommend giving it a try.

[fourfathom]

I'm using v5.1.8 and just finished a couple of 4-layer boards.  These had been 2-layer but some circuit changes convinced me to try going 4-layer.  It was ridiculously easy, and once I figured out how to have a zone within a zone (see "priority") I ended up being quite happy with the result.  A much cleaner layout, done in one evening. (See attachment.  The SMA connector 3D models aren't exactly right, but the pads on the board do fit the connectors I am using.  I added the breakout grids surrounding the two big chips because I had room and figured I might want to use the board for other things.)

I downloaded the v5.99 version (or whatever it was a couple of months ago), and it looked good, but I'm afraid to transition my work in progress to it as it apparently uses a different library structure and you can't revert back.  Since I'm pretty happy with v5.1.8 I was planning to hold out for the official 6 release. 

[ebastler]

I am running 5.1.10. Had to set up a new computer recently and went with the then-current production version of KiCad.

My reason for being reluctant to try 5.99 and then update to 6.x hopefully very soon is that KiCad's update process has not worked well for me in the past. After I updated KiCad on my previous machine I found myself with a second set of libraries and a lot of confusion which ones were used where. I don't recall the details, but it took a long time to clean up.

Have you in general been able to update (or try 5.99 in parallel with your prior version?) without problems?