[Solved] Ubuntu PPA for KiCad 8.0.6 is (Edit:) probably not broken, even though the package names in the repo aren't what was expected

Software
1

I use Ubuntu 22.04, and installed from the PPA according to the install pages. And even though the software itself installed seemingly correctly, the libraries did not. I have no symbols whatsoever.
Just to make sure, I repeated the installation procss by typing apt install kicad kicad-libraries kicad-doc-en kicad-demos unixodbc extra-xdg-menus (i.e., kicad as well as all “recommends” and “suggests”).

In KiCad, under Preferences, the variable KICAD8_SYMBOL_DIR points to /usr/share/kicad/symbols.
That directory does not exist. Not just empty, completely non-existant.

Typing dpkg -L kicad-libraries shows this:

/.
/usr
/usr/share
/usr/share/doc
/usr/share/doc/kicad-libraries
/usr/share/doc/kicad-libraries/changelog.gz

And downloading the kicad-libraries file gave me a 1176 byte large file named “kicad-libraries_8.0.6~ubuntu22.04.1_all.deb”.

I also installed the Windows version (downloaded the install .exe file), and it looks like the files under C:\Program Files\KiCad\8.0\share\kicad match what is under /usr/share/kicad in Ubuntu.
The Windows version had a “symbol” directory with 223 entires, and also “3dmodels” and “footprints” directories.

2

There is no kicad-libraries package in the repo (apt should tell you that and show what will be installed before you press Yes).

image

Instead of kicad-libraries install kicad-library-all or manually kicad-library-footprints, kicad-library-packages3d, kicad-library-symbols.

EDIT: actually my Synaptic shows package called kicad-libraries, and footprints, symbols and 3d packages have different names in Synaptic and PPA repo. They are just called kicad-symbols, not kicad-library-symbols. So something is not right indeed:

image
image985×174 27.2 KB

Install manually symbols, footprints and packages3d. It should help for now.

3

Thanks for a quick reply.

As you saw, the PPA doesn’t have the same files. Also, when I from my Ubuntu system type apt show kicad, I get these relevant lines (and that’s why I tried to install those packages):

Package: kicad
Version: 8.0.6-0~ubuntu22.04.1
…
Recommends: kicad-libraries, kicad-doc-en, kicad-demos, unixodbc
Suggests: extra-xdg-menus
…

However, the packages you mention aren’t enough. I already have them installed, but the directories under /usr/share/kicad still aren’t there (and I also noted that the templates directory only contains a single file, not many as in the Windows install I compared with).

apt list "kicad*" --installed

Listing… Done
kicad-demos/jammy,jammy,now 8.0.6-0~ubuntu22.04.1 all [installed]
kicad-doc-en/jammy,jammy,now 6.0.2+dfsg-1 all [installed]
kicad-footprints/jammy,jammy,now 8.0.6~ubuntu22.04.1 all [installed,automatic]
kicad-libraries/jammy,jammy,now 8.0.6~ubuntu22.04.1 all [installed]
kicad-packages3d/jammy,jammy,now 8.0.6~ubuntu22.04.1 all [installed,automatic]
kicad-symbols/jammy,jammy,now 8.0.6~ubuntu22.04.1 all [installed,automatic]
kicad-templates/jammy,jammy,now 8.0.6~ubuntu22.04.1 all [installed,automatic]
kicad/jammy,now 8.0.6-0~ubuntu22.04.1 amd64 [installed]

I suppose I could get them manually from the git repo, but I’d rather wait until the PPA works as intended, or use the Windows version instead.

4

I’m using the same repo. I’ve got the same packages installed (I’m on 24.10 though) and I have libraries installed all OK.
Did you try to re-install manually symbols, footprints and packages3d? Or un-install, and install again.

5

I removed kicad (apt remove --purge kicad) and reinstalled, but I might not have done that for the symbols/footprints/packages3d explicitly (only libraries)… I could test that, but not right now.

6

kicad-libraries is just a small package that pulls in the actual library packages via dependencies, you can see this from the [installed,automatic] status of the dependencies.

It’s puzzling that nothing was installed to /usr/share/kicad, I can’t explain that. Is there anything unusual about this machine, is it a virtual machine, or uses network mounts, or etc?

7

Well. that’s strange. Today I installed KiCad the normal way (apt install kicad, nothing else), and this time it worked. I now have 223 files in the “/usr/share/kicad/symbols” directory.

I did the same thing yesterday, after removing/purging all KiCad packages, and it didn’t work then.

The point is that this issue is now solved, although I don’t know why. Thanks for the attention to this issue.

As to “unusual system”: I run Ubuntu 22.04 on an ext4 root filesystem, but some of the KiCad files (and a lot of other files) are on a ZFS filesystem, with its mountpoint set to /usr/share/kicad. During the initial install of KiCad, the installation got interrupted, but since I did a “apt remove --purge” afterwards, it should not affect the later attempt to install it. I can only conclude that it did.

8

Just to clarify, the repo names do not have to be associated with the package names. Repos are organised for maintainer and contributor convenience. Packages are built for Linux distros and may slice, dice, and remix the contents of part of, one, or more repos to make sense for the end user.

For a hypothetical example in future some distro may decide to distribute the symbols and footprints in a single package. The repo doesn’t have to be reconfigured, only the package build scripts.

1 Like
9

I’ll hazard a guess that ZFS has a transaction-like nature where if installation of a directory is interrupted none of it takes, but the apt database that records the packages installed had already been updated.