Hi there,
I am using KiCad 8.0.6 but receive the classic “backend error” each time I open the PCB editor
I have followed the installation tutorial and here is the result
In the PCM, KiKit is up-to-date, as far as I can tell…
I tried to uninstall/reinstall KiKit, but with no change
What should I try ?
Thanks for your help
Sorry… Maybe I have to add I’m running Windows 11 with all regular updates
Everything looks fine.
Did you restart kicad? Fully, not just the pcb editor.
Thank you @qu1ck
What do you mean by “purge it” ?
I already tried by uninstalling from the PCM, but you apparently mean something else ?
The path is baked into the kikit.exe when the pip package is installed, if pip uses python from kicad 7’s installation then that’s what pip installed package will use. To get rid of it purge the pip kikit package and install it again from kicad 8 command prompt.
Hi,
I finally uninstall and reinstall the whole KiCad, and it worked.
Hi,
Strangely, I upgraded to 8.0.8 without doing anythin else, and KiKit has vanished again.
And this time, Complete Uninstall/Reinstall of KiCad did not solve the problem…
Maybe there should be an investigation with the KiCad installer when upgrading ?
************************************
* KiCad 8.0 Command Prompt
************************************
You may now invoke python or pip targeting kicad's install
D:\Users\David\Documents\KiCad\8.0>pip install kikit
Requirement already satisfied: kikit in d:\users\david\documents\kicad\8.0\3rdparty\python311\site-packages (1.5.0)
Requirement already satisfied: click>=7.1 in d:\users\david\documents\kicad\8.0\3rdparty\python311\site-packages (from kikit) (8.1.7)
Requirement already satisfied: commentjson>=0.9 in d:\users\david\documents\kicad\8.0\3rdparty\python311\site-packages (from kikit) (0.9.0)
Requirement already satisfied: markdown2>=2.4 in d:\users\david\documents\kicad\8.0\3rdparty\python311\site-packages (from kikit) (2.4.13)
Requirement already satisfied: numpy in c:\program files\kicad\8.0\bin\lib\site-packages (from kikit) (2.2.1)
Collecting pcbnewTransition<=0.5,>=0.4 (from kikit)
Using cached pcbnewTransition-0.4.2-py3-none-any.whl.metadata (1.1 kB)
Requirement already satisfied: pybars3>=0.9 in d:\users\david\documents\kicad\8.0\3rdparty\python311\site-packages (from kikit) (0.9.7)
Requirement already satisfied: shapely>=1.7 in d:\users\david\documents\kicad\8.0\3rdparty\python311\site-packages (from kikit) (2.0.3)
Requirement already satisfied: solidpython>=1.1.2 in d:\users\david\documents\kicad\8.0\3rdparty\python311\site-packages (from kikit) (1.1.3)
Requirement already satisfied: colorama in d:\users\david\documents\kicad\8.0\3rdparty\python311\site-packages (from click>=7.1->kikit) (0.4.6)
Requirement already satisfied: lark-parser<0.8.0,>=0.7.1 in d:\users\david\documents\kicad\8.0\3rdparty\python311\site-packages (from commentjson>=0.9->kikit) (0.7.8)
Requirement already satisfied: PyMeta3>=0.5.1 in d:\users\david\documents\kicad\8.0\3rdparty\python311\site-packages (from pybars3>=0.9->kikit) (0.5.1)
Collecting numpy (from kikit)
Downloading numpy-1.26.4-cp311-cp311-win_amd64.whl.metadata (61 kB)
Requirement already satisfied: PrettyTable==0.7.2 in d:\users\david\documents\kicad\8.0\3rdparty\python311\site-packages (from solidpython>=1.1.2->kikit) (0.7.2)
Requirement already satisfied: euclid3<0.2.0,>=0.1.0 in d:\users\david\documents\kicad\8.0\3rdparty\python311\site-packages (from solidpython>=1.1.2->kikit) (0.1)
Requirement already satisfied: ply<4.0,>=3.11 in d:\users\david\documents\kicad\8.0\3rdparty\python311\site-packages (from solidpython>=1.1.2->kikit) (3.11)
Requirement already satisfied: pypng<0.0.20,>=0.0.19 in d:\users\david\documents\kicad\8.0\3rdparty\python311\site-packages (from solidpython>=1.1.2->kikit) (0.0.19)
Using cached pcbnewTransition-0.4.2-py3-none-any.whl (7.0 kB)
Downloading numpy-1.26.4-cp311-cp311-win_amd64.whl (15.8 MB)
---------------------------------------- 15.8/15.8 MB 10.5 MB/s eta 0:00:00
Installing collected packages: pcbnewTransition, numpy
Attempting uninstall: numpy
Found existing installation: numpy 2.2.1
Uninstalling numpy-2.2.1:
Successfully uninstalled numpy-2.2.1
Successfully installed numpy-1.26.4 pcbnewTransition-0.4.2
D:\Users\David\Documents\KiCad\8.0>
I’m pretty sure that your problem is similar to an issue I had in the past: Python version mismatch prevents addons from loading (#15758) · Issues · KiCad / KiCad Source Code / kicad · GitLab
Thanks, but I do not have the same result when I type “kikit --help” 
D:\Users\David\Documents\KiCad\8.0>kikit --help
Fatal error in launcher: Unable to create process using ‘“C:\Program Files\KiCad\7.0\bin\python.exe” “D:\Users\David\Documents\KiCad\8.0\3rdparty\Python39.Bak\Scripts\kikit.exe” --help’: Le fichier spÚcifiÚ est introuvable.
(Meaning the file cannot be found).
And when opening the pcb editor, each time I have the pop-up stating kikit has not been installed…
I don’t know what to do next (and I’m not a Linux guru !) 
EDIT: Now I see that the command line tries to open Python in 7.0 which is a fodeer I do not have anymore. Where can I change the path to python.exe ?
I’ve had a similar issue before on Windows (no issue on Linux) after an upgrade.
I think I uninstalled and installed again KiKit in the KiCAD command prompt and that helped.
this worked with 8.0.7, but not this time anymore (with 8.0.8)