Compiling KiCad from Source =========================== KiCad Documentation Team Last revised on 2014-december-24 by JP Charras Introduction ------------ This is a generic guide how to compile kicad from scratch. On windows and linux. If you need something more distribution specific or the experimental mac-osx port read the other documents in the Documentation/compiling folder. Installation of Tools --------------------- On windows: Get msys and mingw here: http://mingw.org/ msys sets up a development environment that allows the bash shell to run. mingw are a set of tools that run on windows or under msys. You will need at least the following mingw packages: make, gcc, g++, binutils, autoconf, and automake. On linux: Install "mesa". Use your package manager to install the development libaries. After a fresh install you need the following packages to compile and run KiCad from source. * bzr - Bazaar version control system * CMake - Cross-platform make * GLUT - The OpenGL Utility Library * GLEW * wxWidgets - The wxWidgets GUI toolkit with GTK+ bindings version 3.0 or more * libbz2 (dev) * libcairo (dev) * Boost - Collection of portable C++ source libraries boost will be automagically downloaded, copied in kicad sources tree and patched, the first time you compile kicad. Useful, but not required: * Doxygen - Documentation system for several programming languages Required to build Kicad with scripting (using python) support: Python Swig KiCad uses the Bazaar version control system to track source code changes, and download the boost libraries needed by Kicad. Be sure you bzr install also includes bzrtools. boost libraries will be downloaded the first time you build Kicad. Compiler and basic development tools ------------- Make sure g++, make and other tools are in your path. If windows, then try running g++ and make from within your msys bash shell. PLEASE NOTE: g++ 4.7.1 and 4.7.2 are known to miscompile pcbnew (it get zones wrong) with -O2; using -O1 is a suitable workaround until they fix the compiler. Install or Build wxWidgets -------------------------- WARNING: see wxWidgets_patch_notes.txt for patches and issues in wxWidgets. On Windows, download http://sourceforge.net/projects/wxwindows/files/3.0.2/wxWidgets-3.0.2.zip/download or a newer version. Do NOT use previous versions which all have annoying issues for KiCad. Start msys so you have a bash shell. Note also since 2.9 versions no need to build a "debug" version of the wxWidgets library, the release and the debug version are same. Unzip the wxWidgets zip file into the build directory. Change directories into there, and then: mkdir Release cd Release ../configure --with-opengl make and under Linux, but not under Windows: sudo make install that install wxWidgets libs and headers in /usr/local/ On linux, yo can also download wxWidgets 3.0 (recommandedd) or you can use your package manager to install the development versions of the wxWidgets packages which include the C++ headers. The recommended way is to build wxWidgets from source, and use wxWidgets 3.0 or more recent (Older versions have a print function which does not work). Verify that wx-config is in your path by running it from a command prompt. Linux users then go to next step. Install CMake ------------- On windows, download the installation binary for windows from cmake.org. Install that and choose to add cmake to your path during installation. You will have to restart your command shell for the new path to take effect. Verify that cmake is in your path by trying to run it from a command prompt. On linux, use your package manager to install cmake. You should get cmake 2.8.4 or later. If only an older one is available in your package repository, build cmake from source. Verify that cmake is in your path by trying to run it from a command prompt. Obtain Sources -------------- You can use the Launchpad repository or a tar file for this. See the wiki. To download files from Launchpad repository, you should install bazaar (bzr) that is a version control system like subversion, mercurial, git... Launchpad repository handle 2 branches for KiCda sources: - a product branch (used by developers, which is most of time usable in production) - a stable branch (a copy of the testing branch, when the product branch is a stable state)) Remarks: - The product branch is actively maintained - From the product branch, you can go back to any previous version, using bzr features - The stable branch is poorly or not maintained (and could be removed) In order to have a working Kicad installtion, you need - sources to build binaries - libraries (they are not included in sources) - documentation and translations (they are not included in sources) product branch: bzr branch https://code.launchpad.net/~kicad-product-committers/kicad kicad_src Stable branch: bzr branch https://code.launchpad.net/~kicad-product-committers/kicad/stable kicad_src Components and Footprints libraries all (schematic libs, 3D shapes ...) but new footprints libraries (use Download zip tool) https://github.com/KiCad/kicad-library/ New footprints libraries (use Download zip tool for each lib you want) https://github.com/KiCad/ for footprint libs (*.pretty folders) A mirror of github is available, using bzr: (schematic libs, 3D shapes ... all but new footprints libraries) bzr checkout lp:~kicad-product-committers/kicad/library Old legacy libraries: bzr checkout lp:~dickelbeck/kicad/library-read-only Note also Kicad is able to read on github.com/KiCad/ the *.pretty folders without download, using github plugin. (however the time to read them can be long) Documentation and translations: bzr branch lp:~kicad-developers/kicad/doc kicad_doc Create Makefiles with CMake --------------------------- On windows, go into your msys shell. Linux and windows users both then make two "out of source" build directories: cd mkdir -p build/release mkdir build/debug (if you want a debug version of KiCad) cd build/release On either cmake command line shown below, you can optionally include -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX= For instance on Linux: =/usr/local/kicad or ~/kicad On windows, run the following command: cmake -G "MSYS Makefiles" -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DwxWidgets_ROOT_DIR= ../../ Avoid installing Kicad on C: disk, which is protected by Windows. Use D: or E: ... On linux, run instead the following command: cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release ../../ Take a look at CMakeCache.txt, and in particular CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX, which gives the final install directory. If not what you want, edit it with a text editor and re-run the same cmake command again, but with no -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX given on the command line. Compiling with Make ------------------~ You compile Kicad here. You will only need to do step 8) again when one of the CMakeLists.txt files change. If windows, you must be in your msys shell. On either platform then: cd /build/release make [sudo] make install You are now done unless you want to make a Debug build. Compiling a Debug version ------------------------- cd /build/debug On either cmake command line shown below, you can optionally include -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX= before the final ../../ argument. Although normally you do not install the Debug binaries, you can debug them where they were built. On windows, run the following command: cmake -G "MSYS Makefiles" -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug -DwxWidgets_ROOT_DIR= ../../ where is /Release On linux, run instead the following command: cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug -DwxWidgets_USE_DEBUG=ON ../../ Make the Debug binaries: make See Documentation/compiling/build-config.txt for a list of all CMake options available when compiling KiCad.