Using KiKit on Mac with .dmg KiCad

[mairas]

The MacOS installation instructions at https://github.com/yaqwsx/KiKit/blob/master/doc/macosInstallation.md expect KiCad to be installed via Homebrew. While this is always an option, I personally prefer installing KiCad using the official installation packages.

It turns out installing KiKit on top of .dmg packaged KiCad is surprisingly simple! The KiCad package includes the whole Python runtime in the installation. No activate script is provided, but you can manually "activate" that Python installation by inserting the Python bin directory to your shell $PATH:

export PATH=/Applications/KiCad/KiCad.app/Contents/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/Current/bin:$PATH

Or, on fish shell:

set -x PATH /Applications/KiCad/KiCad.app/Contents/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/Current/bin $PATH

I have created scripts in my project directory with the above path setting command and source the file on the command line to activate the KiCad Python version.

After setting PATH as above, it was possible to install KiKit with pip3 install kikit. (It is possible that I had to install some native dependency libraries with Homebrew.) I have tested this to work and give identical results to a Linux installation. wxWidgets gives some assertion errors but they don't seem to matter:

./src/common/stdpbase.cpp(59): assert ""traits"" failed in Get(): create wxApp before calling this

I hope this is useful to some folks.

[yaqwsx]

Could you consider turning this into a documentation file and submitting a PR? More people will find it there.

[mairas]

Sure. I made an issue for myself about that: #440. Maybe you could assign that issue to me?

[mairas]

For anyone who might find themselves reading this: As I commented on the issue, the approach I described above no longer worked for me either. But the script provided in the macos installation instructions works fine. The Python version has been bumped in KiCad 7 and you need to update the V variable in the script to 3.9, if using KiCad 7.

[yaqwsx]

In that case, I suggest that we edit the script, so it tries to auto-detect the correct path (and possibly, installs KiKit for all versions in the system).