KiCad 9 status

[nguyen-v]

Hi @set-soft, I'm just wondering what the status is with KiCad 9. Is it already mostly supported? Does it need to be modified according to the new IPC API? I'm currently making a workflow video tutorial with KiBot, so I'm wondering if I should wait for a bit longer for KiCad 9 to be fully supported before releasing it.

Thanks for your work!

[set-soft]

The dev branch is quite advanced.
I'm trying to run all tests, in the last run I detected two new KiCad issues:

• pcbnew print layers selection not memorized the File | Print dialog is always starting with all layers selected, so we always get all layers. This isn't important as the pcb_print output is the recommended method.
• Can't check schematic parity from command line (kicad-cli), always says "Schematic parity tests require a fully annotated schematic.". We can't check for PCB/SCH parity. Might be fixed, but I doubt it.

In addition to this we have the usual SCH problem: new format is NEVER documented. I catched a few changes, but more will pop-up as we test it. Lamentably was the same for all major the releases since v6.

We don't have support for the new features, I found you can now mark a whole hierarchy as "Do not fit" or similar. Things like that will take some time to be supported.

I think the above mentioned bugs will be fixed soon, as the previous 9 bugs that I reported.

[set-soft]

Does it need to be modified according to the new IPC API

This will be a very big (huge) issue, but for KiCad 10.
Currently is hard to test (you need the whole KiCad running) and I'm focusing on KiCad 9 release.
We'll need to push for a lot of additions in kicad-cli and the IPC API to keep the functionality.

[nguyen-v]

Great! Is there already a KiCad 9 docker available to test with?

[set-soft]

The following image contains the nightly KiCad snapshot:

ghcr.io/inti-cmnb/kicad_auto_test:nightly

These images contains 1.8.2, so you need to add the current dev code. Note that KiBot can be run "in-place", you can just checkout the repo and execute the src/kibot script, no need to install.

[set-soft]

Now we have dev images to test KiCad 9:

https://github.com/INTI-CMNB/kicad_auto_test/pkgs/container/kicad9_auto_full

The two bugs mentioned above are already fixed.

[nguyen-v]

Now we have dev images to test KiCad 9:

INTI-CMNB/kicad_auto_test/pkgs/container/kicad9_auto_full

The two bugs mentioned above are already fixed.

Thanks! Would using INTI-CMNB/KiBot@v2_dk9 work in CI/CD? I don't see it mentioned in the KiBot repo

[set-soft]

Nope, no GitHub Actions tags yet

[nguyen-v]

Thank you for the amazing work the past few days. Do you know when it will be available for testing?

[nguyen-v]

Otherwise I've tried running the KiCad 9 docker locally, it works great but I've encountered a small issue where mirror_text is not applied in PCB Print for some layers, might have to do with _get_user() in layer.py (I don't currently have time to investigate/try a minimal example so just a heads up). I think it needs to be set as UserMask && UserDefinedLayersMask

[set-soft]

You are right, the user defined layers (User.N) are not included in the UserMask (I wonder why).
To make things worst applying UserDefinedLayersMask doesn't work (you get all the possible layers upto User.45)
So I had to implement it in two steps, should work now.

[set-soft]

Now the images are using KiCad 9.0.0 release