Hi guys. Hope you can point me in the right direction. I am trying to install the KiKit Ver:1.5.0 plugin into Ver:7.0.7 and having issues.
From searching and reading, (yes, I have done some background work), I understand that it relies on kicad-cmd.bat. This is where I expected it to be, in my current KiCad/7.0/bin folder. This is not in the normal C:\Program Files location. It sits with most of my other 3rd party apps on a second F:\ drive to leave more space on my fairly crowded main Windows C: drive. This has never caused any issues in use with KiCad or any other app in the past.
When I try to run the batch file it simply flashes its command window onto the screen and closes it immediately. Surely that can’t be what is supposed to happen? What am I missing here?
Whoops, apologies, my bad! Sorry, it DOES run from the Start Menu shortcut. However, it doesn’t now recognise the next step, “pip install kikit”. There is obviously something wrong in my usage here.
From memory you have to run the command in the KiCad command prompt ?
Yep, that’s what I’m doing now Raptor. This only works from the installed shortcut and not by directly double clicking the batch file. (Just like it said right there in the small print.) I have Python installed and restarted the PC but it still reports " ‘pip’ is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file." when I try “pip install kikit” from the command line.
EDIT: I should have pointed out that Python is installed on the C:\ drive in the default "C:\Users\XXXXX\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python312" folder. “pip.exe” is there in the “Python312\scripts” folder.
I’ve just tried running pip.exe in the command window by giving a full path to the executable. It works but I now get an error message as follows:
Error in sitecustomize; set PYTHONVERBOSE for traceback:
AssertionError: SRE module mismatch
Could not import runpy module
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “”, line 15, in
File “”, line 2, in
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named ‘importlib._abc’
It means nothing to me, can anyone else explain it and point out what is wrong here?
Looking into the batch script it seems to mainly set a lot of variables with version info and various locations. I’ve hacked the batch script just to ECHO these as it sets them. The results do not look promising.
It seems at first glance to expect Python or at least the scripts to be installed within the KiCad\7.0 folder and that is definintely not where it sits. It looks for a “My Documents\KiCad\7.0\3rdparty\Python39\Scripts” folder and the 3rdparty folder is currently completely empty.
This is becoming sadly unsolvable by me. I’ll have to wait for someone who knows a lot more to advise.
Why are you running on an old V7 version. 7.0.11 is the current V7 release, with many bugs fixed since 7.0.7
Thanks for kicking me up the pants David. I sort of assumed I would be told if a newer version was available, not the case of course and I should not have been so lazy.
Version 8.0.0 is available, is that an improvement over Ver7.0.11 or is it still not fully reliable for standard users?
It is your choice based on risk appetite. 7.0.11 is rock solid, 8.0.0 has the new features to play with, but does have crash bugs, which are being fixed for upcoming 8.0.1. The plugins are also being upgraded by their authors.
In your case, with the plugin issue, I would try the low risk upgrade to 7.0.11.
Thank you for that advice David, it’s kind of what I expected and hoped you would say. I’m not a high powered user so new features can easily wait in return for reliability. I’ll get 7.0.11 installed later today and report back with what I find.
I deduce that you are running on Windows, so there is nothing stopping you running both 7.0.11 and 8.0.0 on the same machine. Just copy your V7 project into a new V8 working directory and experiment with both
