Kicad testing PPA packages for Ubuntu
Wayne and Layne are big fans of open source, especially our favorite PCB design tool Kicad. We’ve written instructions in the past about how to compile the most recent testing version of Kicad on Ubuntu, but if you’re looking to run the latest and greatest version of Kicad on your Ubuntu computer (but don’t want to mess about with compiling it yourself) then look no further, we’ve set up a PPA for Ubuntu with the newest Kicad automatically compiled each night.
While you could update the package every time there’s a new version, keep in mind that this is the “testing” branch of kicad, meaning that things might break horribly from day to day (but should be fixed within a day or two). However, it’s pretty stable overall, and it’s really nice to have the newest features and stay on the bleeding-edge of Kicad development!
Great for staying on top and testing the latest.
Is it easy to revert to a previous version if all goes to crud? Does your PPA auto-install or just download the latest compiled code?
What about the nightly saving of your library files? Or do you just create symlinks to the libraries?
I’m not sure about how to got back to prior versions, surely there’s a way to use the package manager to go back to a previous version? The code is auto-compiled on the PPA server into a Ubuntu package, which is then installed on your machine if you want, when you update your packages.
I’m not exactly sure how the libraries are handled with the PPA. Regardless, you really should never edit the included kicad libraries since they will be overwritten when you update your version of kicad, whether or not you’re using this PPA. You should always make a new library for your own use somewhere else and put your modifications in that library. Does that make sense?