kicad-winbuilder

How can I setup KiCAD so I don't need to use RunKiCAD.bat?

Asked by A Wolfe

I am using a version of KiCAD that is almost exactly a year old. Some of the discussion of the new development has interested me and I wanted to upgrade. In the past I have built KiCAD and then moved it to Program Files. Then I can link to the KiCAD.exe, have a nice icon, and it works just like a normal program on Windows. But now KiCAD won't run without using the .bat file. Why has this changed? More importantly, are there a few simple things I can do to use the new build like I have been running my old one? Should I just stop complaining, lump it, and get used to running KiCAD through the .bat file?

Thanks,
Aaron

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Ian Woloschin
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Best Ian Woloschin (iwoloschin) said : 		#1

I've made a shortcut to RunKiCad.bat and put it on my desktop. I then changed the shortcut icon to be the regular KiCad icon. For bonus points, you can set the shortcut to run "minimized' to prevent the CLI prompt from opening. For double bonus points, make a few changes found here (https://bugs.launchpad.net/kicad-winbuilder/+bug/1320512), which will allow the CLI prompt to close as soon as KiCad starts. Now, for my use case, it's exactly like it's been copied into "Program Files".

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A Wolfe (a-wolfie) said : 		#2

Hi Ian, thanks for your suggestion. It's an ok suggestion. I like to keep my desktop free of most icons. I am using Win 7 and the older version of KiCAD I have "pinned" to my start bar. If I work on it I might be able to get the runkicad.bat file to show up there. I don't know if I can pin a .bat file, or I may have to convert the bat file to an exe and see if that might work. Either way it is not normal program behavior to have to use a .bat file to run a program. I see it is setting up some environment variables, and if I had a lot of time I could probably figure it out. The comments in the .bat file give some clues, but I can't say I know everything it talks about. I just thought I would ask here to see if anyone could quickly explain how to use it without the .bat file.

I will leave this out a little longer to see if anyone has a better answer or further comment.

Thanks again,
Aaron

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Ian Woloschin (iwoloschin) said : 		#3

Aaron,

Five seconds of Google reveals this: http://superuser.com/questions/100249/how-to-pin-either-a-shortcut-or-a-batch-file-to-the-new-windows-7-taskbar

I tested that out, it worked fine, particularly with the couple of changes I suggested. Windows doesn't handle the new KiCad window nicely (it forms it's own Taskbar entry), but oh well, a fairly minor issue.

As far as normal behavior goes, I hate to be blunt, but compiling "bleeding edge" software and running it in any sort of non-test environment is "not normal" in and of itself. If you're interested in creating a Windows installer and releasing a new Stable build I'm sure the KiCad developers would love it.

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A Wolfe (a-wolfie) said : 		#4

Thanks for your feedback. I wasn't trying to offend, sorry if it came across that way.

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A Wolfe (a-wolfie) said : 		#5

Thanks Ian Woloschin, that solved my question.

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Ian Woloschin (iwoloschin) said : 		#6

Not offended, just making sure you understand what you're playing with. In generally, most folks should not be playing with "bleeding edge" builds from source, and KiCad's current state is definitely "bleeding edge" at the moment. Unfortunately we don't have anyone willing to maintain a "Stable" Windows build at this time, so there's not much of a choice if you want a newer build, but it's definitely worth keeping in mind that if you're using the KiCad-winbuilder project to compile/run KiCad that you should not be expecting it to behave as nicely as a "Stable" package with a true installer.

That being said, I think Brian's done an excellent job making a reasonably simple and stable build tool, which is no easy feat!