Hi there,
I’ve done my first kicad project following the instructions from Chris Gammels youtube training. For the next slightly bigger project I’m trying to make up my mind on how to manage libraries. For those symbols and footprints that I need to create by myself it’s pretty straight forward but how is the github workflow supposed to work?
For footprints there’s a native integration into github but for the schematic symbols there’s no such thing. So if I want to reuse the schematic symbols or components shall I just clone the library folder from github and add the specific libraries through eeschema? Do I miss something?
What Github workflow?
If you have local symbols, you tell EESchema under Preferences/Component Libraries where to find them for all projects - it’s convoluted and not straight forward, as you need to set up the user defined search path and then you need to add the local lib manually above and if you got symbols with same names as the ones from github you even need to move your local lib up to the top to make it work…
Ok, thanks! I was under the impression that with the github integration of pcbnew the eeschema symbol libraries would be imported too. But I see it’s really two different things and for using the symbol libraries from github I would need to download and import them as per your description.
Yes. You download the libraries only once, and put them into a location of your choosing. Then you configure your paths accordingly. These libraries are from now on yours. The KiCad libraries are subject to change and you don’t want a changed footprint screw up your existing schematic.
The same applies to modules, 3D footprints etc.
I rename the libraries I use and upload them to my own git so I can track changes and, most importantly, work on diggerent machines with them.
Ok, just one more question. I removed all libraries that were part of the kicad installation and added the ones I downloaded from github + one local one I made by myself. I did it with and without adding a search path and I can’t see a difference. In both cases I can see all libs and the containing components / symbols and edit them. Is the eeschema search path kind of legacy or is it needed for something else?
If you keep them all in the standard folder, then it’s no wonder they will be found - no worries.
Under Windows I had problems with that (C:\blabla… for user data is not a good idea) and I usually keep all my user data on a extra drive, so for that one has to set up the extra path(s)…
I keep my own libraries in c:\ProgramData\KiCad\components
Changes KiCad.pro manually using a text editor.
This way I can pass designs on to others and several user can work on the same PC.
c:\Program Files is Write Protected without Admin rights - and the contents of this path depend the currently logged-in user.
I have several versions of kicad.pro, depending on customer libraries.