KiCad Hackathon at CERN

A cadre of KiCad developers including Wayne Stambaugh, Tom Wlostowski, Maciej (Orson) Suminski, and Simon Richter along with some potential new developers Michele Castellana and Alejandro García Montoro gathered at CERN for a KiCad hackathon the week of July 4th to July 10th organized by CERN’s Javier Serrano. There was even enough time to take a trip to visit the KiCad project founder Jean-Pierre Charras.

It would be a gross understatement to say that a good time was had by all. Many new and existing developement topics were discussed and a lot of KiCad hacking took place during the week. Much hacking was done to improve the push and shove router, improve user experience, improve the coverage and accuracy of the geometry library, create a schematic I/O plugin architecture, and finalize the version 5 stable release road map.

There was also working demo and hacking on a new feature created by the CERN developers Tom Wlostowski and Maciej (Orson) Suminski which was kept under wraps and an unexpected urprise for everyone outside of CERN including the project leader. Expect a big announcement in the not too distant future as this feature nears a level of maturity to be committed to the development branch.