Cvpcb errors and errors

I’m using a nightly, but I’ve had these errors, and others have had similar as well, when trying to launch Cvpcb.

Here is the WALL OF TEXT:

Errors were encountered loading footprints:
Cannot download library ‘https://github.com/KiCad/Power_Packages_SMD.pretty’. The library does not exist on the server
Cannot download library ‘https://github.com/KiCad/Power_Packages_ThroughHole.pretty’. The library does not exist on the server
Cannot download library ‘https://github.com/KiCad/Crystals_Oscillators_SMD.pretty’. The library does not exist on the server
Cannot download library ‘https://github.com/KiCad/Housings_ROHM.pretty’. The library does not exist on the server
Cannot download library ‘https://github.com/KiCad/Capacitors_Elko_ThroughHole.pretty’. The library does not exist on the server
Cannot download library ‘https://github.com/KiCad/Housings_SOT.pretty’. The library does not exist on the server
Cannot download library ‘https://github.com/KiCad/Transistors_SMD.pretty’. The library does not exist on the server
Cannot download library ‘https://github.com/KiCad/Housings_SOT-23_SOT-143_TSOT-6.pretty’. The library does not exist on the server
Cannot download library ‘https://github.com/KiCad/Transistors_TO-220.pretty’. The library does not exist on the server
Cannot download library ‘https://github.com/KiCad/Housings_SOT-89.pretty’. The library does not exist on the server
Cannot download library ‘https://github.com/KiCad/Transistors_TO-247.pretty’. The library does not exist on the server
Cannot download library ‘https://github.com/KiCad/Housings_TO-12_TO-18_TO-42_TO-43.pretty’. The library does not exist on the server
Cannot download library ‘https://github.com/KiCad/Housings_TO-50.pretty’. The library does not exist on the server
Cannot download library ‘https://github.com/KiCad/Oscillator-Modules.pretty’. The library does not exist on the server
Cannot download library ‘https://github.com/KiCad/Housings_TO-78.pretty’. The library does not exist on the server
Cannot download library ‘https://github.com/KiCad/Housings_TO-92.pretty’. The library does not exist on the server
Cannot download library ‘https://github.com/KiCad/Pentawatts.pretty’. The library does not exist on the server
Cannot download library ‘https://github.com/KiCad/Sockets_PGA.pretty’. The library does not exist on the server


Get the Devs to try a new release on fresh OS and App install BEFORE releasing it into the wild?

Which OS, which nightly…

I checked the last .pretty in that list and get a 404.

And looking through the results searching for .pretty in that repo all of those you got listed there do not appear.

I’d say you’re at the bleeding edge and something changed before it could be fixed :wink:

Open PCBnew and then the footprint lib wizard… let it fetch those libs for you.
Might need a purge of the wrong entries in the lib manager though…

And be warned, you could loose work - on your own risk. I work with my own libs, so I’m merely theorizing here :innocent:

Hi,

I hit “REPLY” to your message as received.

NEVER BEFORE SEEN the ADD Footprint Librairs Wizard…

Is there no longer the work flow to open cvpcb?

I have to run a backwards PCBnew program, like cvpcb, but backwards, to get
footprints??? WTF?

I run nightlies, but not the latest latest, mine are 2 weeks old I think… so I don’t know if stuff has changed.
Anyhow, the way to set up the footprint libraries is either through CvPCB or PCBnew.
Personally I don’t use CvPCB, as my personal libs contain the links to the footprints already.
Thus I go via PCBnew if I want to change anything on the setup of the footprint libraries.
I also don’t use the Wizard.

If you installed the latest and the fp-lib-table (with the links to the footprint repos) hasn’t been updated with the latest stuff that’s been going on in the KiCAD-github repo then they;re out of sync.
To get them back in sync the way I would try would be to start up the wizard and let it find all those footprint libs in the repo and add them to my install - if I needed them.
That’s why I posted above screenshot of this…

PCBnew>Preferences>FootprintLibrariesWizard (right on top)

CvPCB is a tool that helps you link components (schematic symbols) to footprints. Nothing more, nothing less.
It doesn’t matter which of the functions/tools of KiCAD you start when and how. It’s KiCAD.

The Footprint Library Manager is reachable via CvPCB, but the Wizard is not (at least not in the nightly I got installed) - thus, but I gave you the short and easy way out (I hope that it works that way - you just point the wizard at the repo and it does the rest). That’s why it has been implemented afaik, to make this kind of thing easier.

If you want to do it the ‘hard’ way… open the Lib Manager via CvPCB and do it yourself - library by library.
First delete the entries that can’t be found and then add the ones you think you’re missing.
No idea if that is more fun.

As a final option I can offer this - find the fp-lib-table in your KiCAD program settings folder and edit it with notepad - did that myself a couple times, but not in regards to the github stuff.
:wink:

2 Likes

These two tools do different things.

CvPCB assigns footprints to symbols.
CvPCB is found in eeschem.

The footprint library wizard manages which footprints are available.
In other words it is a helper tool to manage the fp-lib-table.
(The second helper tool is the footprint library manager. There you can directly edit the fp-lib-table entries.)
This two tools are found in pcbnew or footprint editor.

1 Like

I see that you, @Sprig are new to this forum. Please note that new users and users that need reliability are strongly recommended to use the 4.0.5 stable build.

Nightlies are usually well behaved, but the last couple of weeks a lot of new code has been merged, preparing for the 5.0 pre-release. As a result Nightly is currently in a “Alpha” phase and not for the innocent

1 Like

This and the other libs indeed do not exist, so at least the error messages are now spot on.

I think experience is revealing some flaws in the github library scheme. The problem is that normal updating of the footprints is being presented to users as an error, which is highly confusing.

While having footprints always up to date may be a good thing, this now creates a problem of keeping the repository list up to date. Probably, KiCad needs to check against the repo list before attempting to refresh footprints.

Of course, this still leaves users with projects with out of date footprints references. I can’t think of an easy way for those to be automatically updated, the user will have to do manual fixups when footprints are renamed or moved.

1 Like

It appears this commit removed the OPs missing libs : https://github.com/KiCad/kicad-library/commit/d92a6b4e77634c06f02ac70eba0152d54b16f514

That was in Nov 2015, so quite a while ago.

1 Like

Wow, this one was a little tricky for me.
Because there IS a lb-ftb file in the KiCad installation folder in Program Files.
However, there were only a couple of the entries, and it did not change the number of errors when deleted.
At the top of your graphic is C;\Users… AppData\roaming\kicad.

Because I did not notice this till the last, I just used the Library Table editor and did it manually, what a PITA.

Hi!

I’m new to Kicad, so as I was just playing around, attempting to add a logo to a board. I got it to work, but was a bit bumpy. Then I watched the Getting to Blinky 4.0 tutorials and tried creating a new library and adding my custom logo footprint in there. All fine, seemed to work, but as I tried to add it to my board, I too came across this error message (except in my case Pcbnew was telling me it couldn’t find Labels,pretty, Divers.pretty and Discret.pretty).

So I did a search on here, found this topic. I do not understand Github, so I have no idea why yesterday I could add footprints just fine, but today, it came up with these errors.

For anyone experiencing the same, here’s my solution:

I tried the Library Wizard thing, and it seemed it was doing its thing, but it still wouldn’t let me add a footprint (same errors again). So I opened the Library Manager again, removed every single library completely, and then tried adding the Github libraries using the Wizard, and finally, that worked.

I suppose I could’ve just deleted the 3 broken ones, but for the sake of keeping things in sync, I decided I needed to completely rebuild the library table.

Seems a bit too much of a hassle every time someone messes with the Github libraries. I understand if Kicad gives me a warning message (These libraries could not be found and are therefore disabled; Click here to delete the offending libraries from fp-lib-table (for example)), but then it should still let me choose any other footprint. Would be nice if it didn’t completely gave up (just a suggestion).

I still do not have a full grasp of the git and local library methods.

But, it appears that the Git libraries in fact deleted the libraries that used to be there.

KiCad needs to look up a library table, and sync with that each time it reaches out to Git to avoid removed, or added, or name changed, libraries. The user doesn’t really need to know… at least my opinion with as much as I know at this time.

Some sort of prompted update makes more sense. Auto syncing could cause havoc with old projects

1 Like

I think there are several issues with the current git scheme, and many good suggestions have been made, but they are all waiting for a developer sufficiently interested to work on it.

Personally I don’t think retrieving symbols “live” is a good idea anyway, at least some sort of controlled release/update method should be used.

The Github interface used to get the list of libraries is very slow, so there are architectural things to think about as well. Putting all the libraries into one repo might help with that, but is a big change. There are no quick and easy solutions.

2 Likes

That would be nice.

We could utilize the local setup for that.
Just clone all repos instead of copying them. With this setup one can simply pull new updates if one wants.

There is a script in the kicad-library-utils repo that works for this usecase.
It needs git to be installed.
It can setup the local lib (clone all repos, or even specific repos with the ignore and filter flags.)
And update the local clones. (Only to the newest commit.)

This would work a lot better if we had one repo for all footprint libs. We could tag specific commits as releases and users could choose to check them out as they wish. (Not practical if we librarians need to tag that many repos.)
But sadly this needs to wait until we have a better git plugin. (not a github plugin, a full git plugin.)

1 Like