KiCad
Majority of current Linux distributions contain stable version of KiCad
which is fairly old and does not include the Push and Shove router,
which in my opinion is vital for PCB design. Therefore, here are short
instructions for getting the newest version to work.
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. Also, I have
not fully tested those steps, as my system is already full of KiCad
files in many different, strange places.
Prerequisites
The following tools can be easily obtained from any distro package repository (excluding debian stable):
- cmake >= 2.8
- bzr & bzrtools
- wxwidgets-dev or wxgtk-dev >= 2.8
- libbz2
- cairo-dev
- glew-dev
- git
For deb based systems:
$ sudo apt-get install bzr bzrtools build-essential cmake libbz2-dev \
libcairo2-dev libglew-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 git
Building
I am not sure about this, but it will not hurt you - fresh bazaar may need to be given your credentials:
$ bzr whoami "Name Surname <name.surname@cern.ch>"
For the time being, the newest Push and Shove is not merged to the master repository, therefore we are going to use a different one:
$ bzr checkout --lightweight lp:~twlostow/kicad/tom-pns-v2 kicad
$ mkdir kicad/build
$ cd kicad/build
$ cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
$ make -j<number of CPU cores>
$ 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
$ 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 check the contents, that should be enough.