Yes, that is correct. Note that you do need to do a full build at least once, but after that you only need to build what has changed.
On Mon, Jun 9, 2025, 09:14 Anthony Park <[email protected]> wrote: > Thank you for your reply, John. > > So for debugging the PCB editor, would it be okay to understand that I can > just run make pcbnew in the build folder, set up the environment variables, > and then debug it as a standalone application? > > 2025년 6월 9일 월요일 오후 9시 59분 29초 UTC+9에 [email protected]님이 작성: > >> Hi Anthony, >> >> In general, build.py is only used for initial setup of the required >> dependencies, and in CI to automatically build the whole installation >> image. Developers usually don't need to build the whole image to just test >> a part of KiCad. >> >> When you touch a file, running make for the target in question should >> just rebuild that target, not a full rebuild. It sounds like something is >> off with your make command if that is triggering a full rebuild, but I >> haven't seen that before. >> >> There is no need to re-make the kicad.app bundle just for testing >> changes to pcbnew. You can run the PCB editor standalone by setting the >> right environment variables (e.g. KICAD_RUN_FROM_BUILD_DIR). >> >> I also recommend using Ninja instead of make as described at >> https://dev-docs.kicad.org/en/build/macos/index.html but this should not >> be related to your described problem. >> >> -Jon >> >> On Mon, Jun 9, 2025, 04:33 Anthony Park <[email protected]> wrote: >> >>> I'm new to C++ projects and spending a lot of time on builds. I have a >>> question about incremental builds on Mac. >>> >>> When I modify a single file in pcbnew and want to apply only that >>> change, what command should I run? >>> >>> Currently I'm facing these issues: >>> >>> - Running build.py from kicad-mac-builder doesn't seem to apply my >>> changes >>> - Running make kicad in the build folder starts a full rebuild from >>> scratch, taking over an hour >>> >>> I'm trying to work around this by: >>> >>> 1. Running make pcbnew and make install directly in >>> build/src/kicad-build/ >>> 2. Re-bundling pcbnew.app >>> 3. Re-integrating it into the main kicad.app bundle >>> >>> Is this the right workflow for incremental development, or is there a >>> better approach for faster iteration when making small changes to pcbnew? >>> >>> Any guidance would be greatly appreciated, as the long build times are >>> really slowing down my development process. >>> >>> Thanks in advance! >>> >>> -- >>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google >>> Groups "KiCad Developers" group. >>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send >>> an email to [email protected]. >>> To view this discussion visit >>> https://groups.google.com/a/kicad.org/d/msgid/devlist/4d6cd16a-5373-40e0-a07a-e3a31676b7ben%40kicad.org >>> <https://groups.google.com/a/kicad.org/d/msgid/devlist/4d6cd16a-5373-40e0-a07a-e3a31676b7ben%40kicad.org?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> >>> . >>> >> -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "KiCad Developers" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/a/kicad.org/d/msgid/devlist/CA%2BqGbCAstEkdtiZAYP9dA3OFb9pDswHgqxoAeeEf5GS-XjkfYw%40mail.gmail.com.
