Gerbv has been viewing Gerber files for a quarter of a century. The project — a free, GPL-2.0-or-later viewer for Gerber RS-274X, Excellon drill and CSV pick-and-place files — was registered on SourceForge on August 19, 2001 as part of the gEDA family, and its official home today is the gerbv/gerbv repository on GitHub, where the README states that official releases are published on GitHub Releases. This page collects the verified release timeline, explains where older versions live, and flags the two things people most often get wrong about old Gerbv builds: the Windows 7 cut-off, and checksums for old Windows ZIPs.
The 2026 revival (current era)
- v2.13.0 — March 20, 2026. The current stable release. First release with native Windows and macOS builds: an NSIS Windows installer, a native MSYS2 UCRT64 Windows ZIP, an official macOS ZIP, plus Ubuntu 22.04 / Debian 13 .deb and Fedora 43 .rpm packages. Six assets, each with a published SHA-256. Covered in depth in Gerbv 2.13.0: first native Windows and macOS builds.
- v2.12.0 — March 8, 2026. DXF export became built in on all platforms; new optimised SVG export with optional Inkscape layers. Four assets: Debian, Fedora and Ubuntu packages and a Windows amd64 ZIP. That Windows ZIP (gerbv_v2.12.0_.Windows.amd64.zip, 41,497,359 bytes) does have a published digest — SHA-256 90409c5a92ef885f8dfa2b33112deb4b36122d6110bf5576c6669d151d43d576 — noticeably larger than the slim 2.13.0 Windows builds that replaced it.
- v2.11.1 — March 2, 2026. A quick follow-up release in the same four-asset layout.
- v2.11.0 — February 28, 2026. The comeback release: the first after the project’s CMake rewrite of its build system, introducing the modern packaging pattern (.deb, .rpm, Windows ZIP; Windows build is 64-bit).
The quiet years: 2.10.0 and 2.9.x
- v2.10.0 — August 21, 2023. The last release before the long pause — a single Windows amd64 ZIP asset on GitHub. Roughly two and a half years separate it from v2.11.0, which is why older pages sometimes describe Gerbv as abandoned; that description is outdated.
- v2.9.8 — June 24, 2023, preceded by v2.9.7 (May 25, 2023) and v2.9.6 (January 4, 2023). Each shipped with a single Windows amd64 ZIP on the GitHub repository.
A checksum warning for this era: the older 2.9.x and 2.10.0 Windows ZIPs carry no published SHA-256 digest in the GitHub release metadata. Any website that prints a tidy hash table for those files invented it. If you run an old build, obtain it from the GitHub releases archive itself and treat the source as the verification — and understand that you are running it without a publisher checksum to check against. Current builds do not have this problem: every v2.13.0 asset on the download page lists its real digest.
The SourceForge era
Before GitHub, Gerbv lived on SourceForge, where it was registered in 2001. Its announcements there mark the early milestones — 2.0.0 in January 2008 brought the much more powerful layer-control GUI, Cairo rendering with transparency, report windows and command-line export; 2.1.0 in September 2008 added RS-274X and Excellon export (format translation and file “cleaning”), object selection with deletion, panelisation from the command line, and the libgerbv library split. The SourceForge files area still serves tarballs from that era (up to the 2.3.0-era sources), and the project page shows a 4.6 out of 5 rating from 26 ratings and 1,247,968 all-time downloads — historical figures for the whole project since 2001, not numbers for any current version. SourceForge itself now points visitors to the modern official site, and current releases ship only via GitHub.
Where to get older versions
Every release discussed here is archived on the project’s GitHub Releases page (github.com/gerbv/gerbv/releases), newest first; scroll back or use the tags to reach 2.12.0, 2.11.x, 2.10.0 and the 2.9.x line. That archive is the only source this site recommends for old binaries — it is the project’s own channel, so an old file there is as official as an old file gets. For current use, though, there is rarely a reason to go back: v2.13.0 is the stable release, with per-platform guides for Windows, macOS and Linux, plus the portable Windows ZIP.
The Windows 7 exception
The one deliberate reason to install an old Gerbv is Windows 7. The upstream README is explicit: Windows 7 is supported only up to release 2.8.0. The 2026 Windows builds are 64-bit, tested on Windows 10. So a Windows 7 machine should take 2.8.0 (or older) from the releases archive, accepting that it misses the CMake-era packaging, the built-in DXF export from 2.12.0, and the native-build improvements of 2.13.0. On any supported system, install the current release instead — and if you are not sure which version you have, the timeline above plus the download page will tell you how far behind you are.
Frequently asked questions
What is the latest version of Gerbv?
v2.13.0, released on March 20, 2026. It followed three other releases in three weeks — v2.11.0, v2.11.1 and v2.12.0 — after a quiet period stretching back to v2.10.0 in August 2023.
Where can I download older Gerbv versions?
From the archive on the project’s official GitHub Releases page, which keeps every release from the current line back through 2.9.x and beyond. SourceForge still hosts only the legacy, 2.3.0-era files.
Which Gerbv version should Windows 7 users install?
2.8.0 or older — upstream supports Windows 7 only up to that release. Also note that old 2.9.x/2.10.0 Windows ZIPs have no published SHA-256 digest, so they cannot be checksum-verified the way 2.13.0 assets can.