KiCad 5, Availability of Spice based circuit simulation in Eeschema
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Starting with version 5.0.1+dfsg1-2 KiCad is built with ngspice support. Thus
you will find a new menu entry in Eeschema 'Tools -> Simulator' for circuit
simulation of your schematic. Please have a look into the documentation how to
use this feature.

 -- Carsten Schoenert <c.schoenert@t-online.de>  So, 14 Oct 2018 11:25:00 +0800

KiCad 5, Changes to the global Symbol and Footprint Table
---------------------------------------------------------

The KiCad application stores global settings for the schematic symbols in the
file

 $(HOME)/.config/kicad/sym-lib-table

and for the footprints within

 $(HOME)/.config/kicad/fp-lib-table

Both default settings have been changed in KiCad 5 due the changed names of the
libraries, unfortunately the kicad application isn't doing any automatic
migration. You need to make the adjustments by yourself within the editor for
the 'Symbol Libraries' (in Eeschema within the menu 'Preferences - Manage
Symbol Libraries...') and the editor for the 'Footprint Libraries" (in
Footprint Editor in the menu 'Preferences - Manage Footprint Libraries...')

Note:
It's mostly easier to backup the old files an re-adjust just your local needs
after a restart of KiCad. KiCad will recreate new default files if it can't
find any of the files in the .config folder.

 -- Carsten Schoenert <c.schoenert@t-online.de>  Mo, 23 Apr 2018 15:00:00 +0800

KiCad 5, the 'Modern Toolset (Accelerated)' in Gerbview or Pcbnew and Wayland
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

If you running your DE (Desktop Environment) under Wayland [1], a planned
replacement for X [2], and you have turned on the 'Modern Toolset (Accelerated)'
in Pcbnew or Gerbview you probably experience some strange things like crashes
of your complete DE session.

This happen due a issue within the wxWidget3.0 framework while running in a
Wayland session together with the GTK3 bindings against the wxWidget framework.
This is no problem inside KiCad. The bugtracker for KiCad is tracking this
issue on Launchpad in the bug report 1755360 [3] and the KiCad project has
made an announcement about the problem on the project website [4]. The origin
of the problem is tracked on the TRAC instance on wxwidgets.org [5].

Right now there is no easy solution for this regression. You can use some
workarounds to get KiCad working nevertheless.

1. Do not use the 'Modern Toolset (Accelerated)' and use instead the 'Modern
   Toolset (Fallback)' option.

2. Run KiCad within a X11 session.
   To do so you have also two options.

   Option 1: Switch over to use X11 instead of the Wayland as base for your
   DE. This requires a complete log off from your running DE session and
   select 'X11' from the settings in your window manager before start the
   window manager itself.

   Option 2: Start KiCad (or the standalone applications) within a dedicated
   X11 session by setting the environment variable 'GDK_BACKEND' to 'x11'
   while calling pcbnew or gerbview. e.g.

     $ GDK_BACKEND=x11 kicad
      or
     $ GDK_BACKEND=x11 pcbnew

How to check if I'm running a x11 or a Wayland session?
You can use this one liner to detect your session you running on. Please adjust
'YOUR_USER_NAME' with your login name.

  $ loginctl show-session `loginctl|grep YOUR_USER_NAME|awk '{print $1}'` -p Type

If you get the following output your session is running within Wayland.

  $ Type=wayland

[1] https://wiki.gnome.org/Initiatives/Wayland
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Window_System
[3] https://bugs.launchpad.net/kicad/+bug/1755360
[4] http://kicad-pcb.org/help/known-system-related-issues/#_wayland
[5] https://trac.wxwidgets.org/ticket/17702

 -- Carsten Schoenert <c.schoenert@t-online.de>  Sun, 8 Apr 2018 18:00:00 +0200
