Comment 21 for bug 1752150

@Brian,

On 03/07/2018 01:36 PM, Brian Piccioni wrote:
> Wayne
>
> Thanks for the encouragement. My hope is that at least if I can build
> and trivially modify KiCad interaction with developers will be more
> productive for them, especially given my modest expertise. Similarly, it
> will be easier for me to follow the road map if I have a clue to begin
> with.
>
> Renumbering has three major components: parsing the PCB and schematics
> (not as trivial as you'd imagine given the potential for a hierarchy),
> creating a change plan, and implementing that change plan on the
> respective files (PCB, schematics, and netlist), basically back-
> annotation. I suspect that whatever changes are made to the file
> structures to enable pin-swapping will most like impact the third
> component, namely back-annotation.
>
> I did make a "feature request" and was hopeful somebody would reach out
> to me. When that didn't happen I figured I'd move it along myself a bit
> farther.
>
> That said, I'm not trying to wag the dog. I'm sure the devs are very
> competent and I don't want to waste their time because I know what it is
> like to have to deal with a complete newb like me asking questions all
> the time. That said I will review the roadmap.
>
> I am exclusively using msys64 but the build seems to combine both,
> though I'm not sure why. My skills on things like cmake are negligible
> so I am very hesitant to try and parse it.
>
> I do not understand what this means
>
> " I would avoid building and installing a binary package. There is no
> need to install the libraries and docs everytime you want to make a
> change and rebuild kicad. Building kicad itself takes long enough on
> windows. The overhead of the libraries will make this process really
> painful."

It means use the hard way instructions instead of the easy way
instructions so you only build kicad and not repackage all of the
libraries and documentation every time you make a change to the kicad
source.

>
> Except to say that yes, I'd very much like to know how to build *only*
> PCBnew, at least for the moment. I just don't have a clue how to start.

Run `make pcbnew` instead of `make`. This will only build pcbnew and
it's build dependencies.

>
> Since I only found instructions on how to build all of Kicad I figured
> I'd start with that. Once I did that I could pare it down. If there is a
> shortcut to only building PCBnew I'd be deliriously happy.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: <email address hidden> <email address hidden> On Behalf Of Wayne Stambaugh
> Sent: March 7, 2018 1:03 PM
> To: <email address hidden>
> Subject: Re: [Bug 1752150] Re: Build from source MSYS2 the Easy Way Fails
>
> @Brian,
>
> I think your back-annotation tool would be a useful tool for users. As
> Jon mentioned. Please keep in mind back annotation for pin and gate
> swapping in being planned for v6. I'm sure this will dovetail in with
> the work that you are doing so it is important to communicate with the
> development team what you are working on to prevent duplication of
> effort and merge conflicts. I cannot stress this enough. We have had
> too many developers write large pieces of code that could not be used
> because it didn't fit into what other developers were working on. That
> is why we have a road map. You should look there first. As always, if
> you are not sure, ask.
>
> As for msys2 build issues. I was incorrect about oce and ngspice not being packaged. They actually are packaged and can be installed using pacman. Will try to do a better job of keeping the windows build instructions up to date. FYI, there is a known issue (see the link Jon
> provided) in 32-bit builds so I recommend you use 64-bit (x86_64) builds of kicad or you will have to fix a broken path in some of the build.make files in your kicad binary path. Since it sounds like you are going to be hacking on kicad, I would avoid building and installing a binary package. There is no need to install the libraries and docs everytime you want to make a change and rebuild kicad. Building kicad itself takes long enough on windows. The overhead of the libraries will make this process really painful.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Wayne
>