HI all, new to forum, new to KiCad. I have KiCad 5.1.5 running under Linux Mint 20.1 and I’ve broken my installation (I accidentally deleted the symbols library files). I’ve reinstalled them and have succeeded in getting symbols back but now there are no foot prints, even after I’ve (I think) reloaded those. I’ve tried uninstalling and reinstalling the whole package but no joy. Clearly uninstalling doesn’t remove everything because a couple of additional symbols I’d installed are still there. How do I do an uninstall that gets rid of everything so I can start over cleanly? Or is there some other way to fix this?
5.1.5 is quite old.
Try uninstalling again, but this time install the current 5.1.10 from here:https://www.kicad.org/
There is a warning about Kicad being unsupported for Mint, but both 5.1.10 and the nightly work perfectly.
Following the instructions loads the program and all the libraries and at the bottom of the page you can download 5.99 if you wish to sample the soon to be 6.0. This 5.99 will install as a separate program.
This way KiCad gets updated with normal system updates when newer KiCad V5.1.x versions become available. The last few times I got the updates about a week before they are announced on the KiCad website. (If it was the other way around, then people will start complaining of why the announced new KiCad version is not available yet).
Installing and de-installing does not and should not delete files you added yourself (Just do not modify the default libraries, those will get overwritten)
This should get rid of your installation:
sudo apt remove kicad --purge
Or check if
~/.config/kicad
does still exist after un installing KiCad.
If you do not want to delete this directory, then you can change it’s name, so KiCad can’t find it anymore. I have a habit of appending a date in ISO_8601 format for purposes like this.
The version I was running was what the Software Manager installed. It never occurred to me to check and see how antique that was. The purge and reinstall via command line seems to have done the trick. Many thanks.
Spoke too soon. When I go to assign footprints in my project I get a window that says “Configuration Error” and “No PCB footprints are listed in the current foot print library”. KICAD_SYMBOL_DIR points to /usr/share/kicad/library which contains all of the appropriate symbol files but no .pretty file. Did I err in assuming that “full installation” should include symbols or did something go wrong? And more importantly, how to fix?
/usr/share/kicad/library is not the location of .pretty (footprint) libraries, but for schematic symbol libraries. It has “.dcm" and ".lib” files.
Whenever there is a clean install of KiCad, it asks you if you want to generate the footprint library table entries. Normally you should reply with “Yes” to this question. If you do not do this, then KiCad does not use any of it’s libraries and you have to setup the libraries yourself.
The whole story is in:
A quick way to repair it, is to:
Exit KiCad.
Rename the “~/.config/kicad” directory so KiCad does not see it (and you have a backup)
Restart KiCad (It should ask you to generate those library tables again.