Every time KiCad is updated, I have to reinstall the pip packages installed from the KiCad terminal, such as kikit. Is it possible to update KiCad without losing the installed pip packages? Alternatively, can the system’s pip libraries be included in KiCad’s?
Answers depend on your OS
I am on Windows 11…
How are you reinstalling kicad.
I’m using it on windows 10, with kikit.
I’ve had to reinstall kicad when I’ve switched from Kicad 7.xx to kicad 8.0.0.
But since I’ve installed kicad 8.0.1 and a testing version (so 8.0.1 ++), and I didn’t do anything about kikit, and it is still working.
So a major update of kicad, force you to reinstall every plugin. But a bux fix update does not.
When I update kicad, I just launch the installer, and I do not uninstall kicad before.
Like Bertrand said above, when you install a bugfix of the same major version you should not lose any pip packages. If you upgraded from another major version then it will bring newer python too and you can’t keep your pip packages.
On windows there is no such thing as system pip packages. Whatever python you have installed separately from kicad lives on it’s own and can not cooperate with kicad directly.
It always happens to me for any type of update, small or large, even when trying to download a stable test version from here: Downloads | KiCad EDA.