Opening schematic error

Hi,
Installed KIcad 7.0.6, and have an issue. When opening a schematic, I get a reply back saying : “schematic already open”.
I already looked into an old error for kicad 5, but the info referred to a cache/kicad…did not find this.
How to solve this ?
thank you in advance.
regards
Ludo

1 Like

I’ve had this problem with certain projects in 7.0.5 and now in 7.0.6
I still haven’t found what is causing this nor found any reports on Gitlab.

Selecting “Open anyway” seems to cause no detrimental effects.

Check your project folder for a “~[project].kicad_sch.lck” ? This was something presumably cherry-picked back from 7.99 but it doesn’t seem to work very well… (Maybe after a crash the file gets left there?)

1 Like

Hi scandey, what do you mean with : presumably cherry-picked back from 7.99…???

When a feature / bug fix is important, it can get copied from the unstable development version (7.99) of KiCad into the next stable release of KiCad (7.0.6). It turns out this is more of a bug fix than a new feature, since it is replacing an existing lock file elsewhere with a new lock file in the project directory.

Since I was also quite confused by the new error message in 7.0.6, I opened an issue to improve the message and suggest to the user that there may be a lock file incorrectly present after a crash rather than multiple versions of KiCad open.

Since many forum users are neither software developers nor native English speakers, here’s a pedantic answer to your question:

The literal definition of “cherry pick” is “to select the best or most desirable” (Mirriam-Webster).

In software development, to “cherry-pick” is the act of selecting a single commit (source code change) or set of commits from one branch of development and adding them to another branch. (git documentation)

What he meant was that a change from the development branch (7.99, which will eventually become the v8 release) has been introduced to the stable version branch (7.0.x).

Does that help?

1 Like

For less experienced people like me, I closed Kicad, and completely got out of the system.

Went to the project page and found two files with the file type “.lck” and deleted them.

Opened Kicad again and did not have the file already open error any more.

1 Like

Have this issue on several projects now (Ubuntu 23.04). It happens after forcing the eeschema to close (wait/close prompt). The issues is persistent every time when opening the schematic.

Application: KiCad Schematic Editor x86_64 on x86_64

Version: 7.0.6-7.0.6~ubuntu23.04.1, release build

Libraries:
wxWidgets 3.2.2
FreeType 2.12.1
HarfBuzz 6.0.0
FontConfig 2.14.1
libcurl/7.88.1 OpenSSL/3.0.8 zlib/1.2.13 brotli/1.0.9 zstd/1.5.4 libidn2/2.3.3 libpsl/0.21.2 (+libidn2/2.3.3) libssh/0.10.4/openssl/zlib nghttp2/1.52.0 librtmp/2.3

Platform: Ubuntu 23.04, 64 bit, Little endian, wxGTK, ubuntu, wayland

Build Info:
Date: Jul 7 2023 02:32:35
wxWidgets: 3.2.2 (wchar_t,wx containers) GTK+ 3.24
Boost: 1.74.0
OCC: 7.6.3
Curl: 7.88.1
ngspice: 38
Compiler: GCC 12.2.0 with C++ ABI 1017

Build settings:
KICAD_SPICE=ON

Unfortunately that is to be expected, if KiCad doesn’t close normally it won’t remove the lock file.
I believe this has been fixed for 7.99, not clear to me if the change in logic will be cherry picked back to 7.0.x.

Hi,
I encounter this problem with 7.07 on Linux Mint.
I wanted to write a post but instead found this one.

I will delete the above mentioned “.lck” files and I will report if the problem vanishes …

Yes, deleting the .lck file makes the warning window disappear !

Maybe KiCad should hava a “repair project” menu entry ? But when this is already known i am sure it will be fixed one way or the other.

Thank you people for the advice.

2 Likes

I experienced this problem today with another project. It happens (NOT always !) when I select a footprint in the pcb editor and open the footprint editor from the footprints context menu.

I am using 7.07 on Linux Mint.

I can not guarantee its KiCads fault because my PC is aprox. 15 jears old and its developing some geriatric problems. but I see the same on a new win10 Laptop. The only difference is that the win version did NOT show the “already open” window after using the task manager to kill KiCad.

Sorry, I can not offer a more precise description and I rarely use the possibility to modify a footprint from inside the pcb editor, maybe that behaviour was there all the time.

OK, I am curious and did some experiments (Linux Mint):

I made a copy of my project. Everything works fine.
I open the footprint editor from the context menu, still fine !
I close the footprint editor without changing anything.
I start a DRC (no errors)
I repeat opening the footprint editor for the same component.
I see a window “xy does not react”
This time I am stubborn, I do NOT close any application, just wait…
After 2 minutes the footprint editor appears !!
Everything works fine, from now on the editor will appear at once.

I close+open the project and everything starts from the beginning !

I can not tell what the PC is doing inbetween !

Scandey, THANKS! That fixed it for me with no detrimental effects. Mine was caused by a KiCad crash while having the schematic open and printing it.
I am running KiCad 7.0.8 under Windows 10 Education.

1 Like

This topic was automatically closed 90 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.