Kicad 8.0.x crashing, and how to report?

Software
1

Hi folks,

After really smooth sailing with Kicad 6 and 7, Kicad 8 is crashing several times a day for me, both Schematic editor and PCB editor.

My main question is how to report this most usefully? Obviously if there is an error message, that can be captured. But more often than not, the crash just causes the editor (Schematic of PCB) to vanish. Are there logs somewhere that are helpful?

In my case, this is on Windows 10 Pro recent, on two quite different well-equipped machines. Running Kicad 8.0.2.

The crashes are not very repeatable, though there MAY be a pattern of a crash occurring immediately or shortly after return from symbol or footprint editor.

Thanks. Graham

2

Hi,

Open Kicad, then Help > Report Bug.

If you do not have a Gitlab account you will have to create one. Just follow the instructions.

Once signed in you will have the “New Issue” screen. There is a prompt to show what needs to be included. I delete that as I complete each section.

On the left you will find a title “Issues”. Click on that and read a few to see how to form your issue.

3

Yes, I already know how to file a bug report in general on gitlab.

I’m asking specifically about reporting crashes, which, as I noted, are not very repeatable, and the only thing to report is something like “Schematic editor vanished” after nondescript or vague circumstances.

I was hoping there was something more we could do. Like send a log file. Or turn on logging of some kind for future occurrences.

4

There’s a crash snapshot mechanism for Windows that you can enable, search previous posts by devs. Don’t have Windows so that’s all I know.

5

Thanks, that could be a good idea, but I’m going to need more of a clue about what posts you’re referring to. Quick search didn’t find anything related.

6

Sorry, miss-understood the heading. :frowning_face:

I also was looking for this:

but can’t find anything and also don’t use Windows.

You may have to wait a few hours for Europe to wake up or the US to finish dinner or whatever :slightly_smiling_face:

Nothing in the FAQs either.

7

No problem. I’m not in a too much hurry… I suspect there will be more symptoms to catch :-).

1 Like
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In the KiCad preferences you can enable Sentry crash reporting. You’ll get a random user identifier, which is sent alongside the anonymised crash reports. In your Gitlab issue, you can let the devs know your crash ID.

I’m afraid I’m not sure quite where in the preferences the option to enable it is as I use MacOS, and it’s only supported on Windows currently.

1 Like
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Can be found under ‘preferences’ ‘Data collection’

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Okay! That’s exactly the sort of idea I hoped for! (And thanks @636Steve for the location of the setting.)

Turns out, on my installation that checkbox was already checked.

Is there some way to tell that such a report was sent?

11

For privacy/security reasons this data isn’t publicly available (although the reports are anonymous and don’t intentionally contain sensitive information, it is better to be safe). If you send one of the developers your user ID, we can check to see if a report was received.

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I was really asking whether there was a way to check on my end that my Kicad program sent the report… which I assume is not a privacy issue for me to know about.

I wouldn’t really want to bother you devs about whether you guys received a report, if I can simply check on my end that it was sent.

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There is not a reliable way at the moment. The best way is to check if a report was received. It’s possible for a client to think it has sent a report but the server not receive it fully, etc.

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