7.0 Plugin and Content manager not starting

External Plugins
1

Hi, I installed KiCad for the first time. Did not install a version before. I took the latest 7.0 Version.
The Plugin and Content manager does not start. I get the window “Fetching repository packages” (Not responding). I can wait very long but the progres is none!
How can i fix this, I could not find any help[ yet.
These plugins seem very usefull to work with pleasure with kicad.
I run W10.

2

If you have a firewall installed, it may be blocking the Plugin and Content manager from connecting to the internet. Try temporarily disabling the firewall and see if that resolves the issue.

3

Hi, I disabled all my PC protections. But this dit NOT help.
Are there tools to try?
I think kiCad is not usable if plugins don’t work… :frowning:

4

Oh I am very sorry to hear this. You can try to run Kicad as an administrator. You can also try to clear the cache. If none of these resolve the issue, you can try reinstalling KiCad. Before reinstalling, make sure to uninstall the current version and delete any leftover files and folders.

5

Asking people to run any user application as administrator is very bad advice. First of all you can break your system if your applcation affects any system files which user level permissions cannot. Secondly, and this is more likely, you might get something running as administrator, but then later you cannot use the files as a user because they were created owned by administrator.

6

Does Kicad work properly.
Do all the other Icons work

7

Do you have direct internet connection or through some proxy?

Try going to C:\Users\<your username>\AppData\Local\kicad\7.0\pcm and delete everything there.

8

(EDIT: Sorry, this wasn’t so simple and I didn’t test thoroughly. I have to try later again.)

This may be a bit tricky, KiCad doesn’t offer any way to debug this. You can try some steps, but it’s not as simple as mouse clicks.

There’s the file kicad.json in %appdata%\kicad\7.0. There’s a section for the repositories:

"pcm": {
    "check_for_updates": false,
    "last_download_dir": "",
    "lib_auto_add": true,
    "lib_auto_remove": true,
    "lib_prefix": "PCM_",
    "repositories": [
      {
        "name": "KiCad official repository",
        "url": "https://repository.kicad.org/repository.json"
      },
      {
        "name": "KiCad official repository (1)",
        "url": "http://localhost:8000/repository.json"
      }
    ]
  },

I added a copy of the remote official repository.json in a local folder. I opened the KiCad 7.0 Command Prompt from the Windows Start menu. A simple http server can be started there after navigating to the folder where the file is:

python -m http.server 8000 --bind 127.0.0.1

Now you can navigate to http://localhost:8000/repository.json with a web browser to test it. When it works, you can (close KiCad and) replace the original “KiCad official repository” and its URL with this local one, like in my example configuration (EDIT: don’t just add a new one, replace the original, I only added because my setup works with the original). Then start KiCad again and try what happens with the plugin manager.

This is of course only the first step if it still gets stuck.

9

Thanks for many hints… I’ll try them.
Now: I allready have a python 3.10 on my system for a year.
I also have Visual studio and Visual code…
I hope that kicad is doing nothing with these…
(python is nice, but very version dependant… that’s a big disadvantage)

10

This is remarkable:
I installed kicad 7.0 aswell on my laptop from my boss.
And what: Plugin and content manager, does NOT work there aswell…
I can try internet through a hotspot… But that my internet access is not fine seems very uncommon.

11

The ecosystem seems to require https instead of accepting http which makes local testing non-trivial, a python one-liner won’t do. If you are technically inclined you can try to set up a local https server and serve the original repository.json from it to see if KiCad still chokes. On the other hand the file points to other files which are remote, and I don’t know if KiCad gives any information about which file or connection is problematic, so this may be useless anyway.

12

The good news is KiCad plugins work without the Manager, you just have to download and install them manually. If you have some specific plugin which you need, you can ask for advice for it. But KiCad is completely usable without plugins, too.

1 Like
13

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14

Would be nice If I can find that list some where…
Note, I’m a hardware developer, not an experiences software guy…

15

Hi eelik,
I don’t have that kicad.json found in my AapData.
I found repository.json:
{
“maintainer”: {
“contact”: {
“web”: “Contact Us | KiCad EDA”
},
“name”: “KiCad team”
},
“name”: “KiCad official repository”,
“packages”: {
“sha256”: “2544ab79111fb4f1f7fe7d996f7233d1565206a78c9ae692631d81fbb630fbb9”,
“update_timestamp”: 1678717633,
“url”: “https://gitlab.com/kicad/addons/repository/-/raw/main/packages.json”
},
“resources”: {
“sha256”: “808d1c7e91ecca47632c7e5da082cbee53d79539ad4319f43213961444d7d73f”,
“update_timestamp”: 1678717633,
“url”: “https://gitlab.com/kicad/addons/repository/-/jobs/artifacts/main/raw/artifacts/resources.zip?job=update”
}
}

Can it be a failure in the installation package of versio 7.0?
As it does not work on my other system aswell
maybe I must try 6.x? to see if…

16

Did not get Plugin manager working aswel…

17

As I said later, https server would be required, the test would not be so simple as I first thought and probably it’s not worth it.

18

Plugin manager works fine with http, https is not required.

Not sure what the issue is but you didn’t answer about internet connection. If it’s using a proxy then maybe there is something wrong with proxy detection logic. Otherwise I’m out of ideas.

19

Hi i think I’m more a hardware designer…
I don’t understand what I should/must do with this HTTP / HTTPS issue.
What should I do? check? verify?

20

Your answers make it hard to help you. When asked about proxy you ignore the question, twice.

This is also not clear, what did you try.

this post also indicates that kicad did manage to download part of the repository so it’s not an issue of your internet connection, most likely.

Some antivirus programs are known to block kicad from trying to save part of the repository on disk (specifically resources archive that has icons of packages).

I asked if deleting this folder helps C:\Users\<your username>\AppData\Local\kicad\7.0\pcm. Did you try that?
If after deleting you still can’t launch plugin manager, which files, if any, show up there when you try to open plugin manager?