Broken as of KiCAD 8?

[evantandersen]

It seems KiCAD 8 changed the file format enough that KiUtils opening, parsing, and saving a PCB will corrupt it and prevent it from being opened.

To replicate:

1. Open a KiCAD 7 PCB in KiCAD 8, you will get a notice about upgrading the file format upon save.
2. Save the PCB to change to new format
3. Board().from_file("foo.kicad_pcb").to_file()
4. Try to open it in KiCAD 8, no dice!

[evantandersen]

An interesting note is that there's been rumblings on the discord about revamping the scripting interface for KiCAD 9, perhaps that will replace KiUtils? Not sure if there is a use case for externally-parsing the files vs. doing it live in the editor.

I used KiUtils for my project originally because it was much better documented / much simpler than the crazy pcbnew python system that currently comes with KiCAD. However, having to save, close, run a python script, then re-open my board everytime I want to update something that's scripted is a bit of a pain. Perhaps in the future we can have the best of both worlds?

[mvnmgrx]

Hello, KiCad 8 is not yet supported and its possible that there are breaking changes from 7 to 8 which kiutils does not yet account for. I haven't yet had time to look into the changes KiCad 8 brought, but its on my agenda to do so.

For the use-cases you described, the pcbnew internal scripting interface is of course more suited. However, i wrote kiutils initially to be able to process KiCad-related files outside of the KiCad environment. A few other use-cases for kiutils might include:

• automatic script-based generation of footprints, parts, boards, etc.
• commit hooks in git (an example would be removing filled zones before committing changes into the database)
• parts management outside of KiCad (e.g kitree or Ki-nTree)
• you name it

so, regardless of what happens to the pcbnew scripting interface, kiutils will still deliver value in being independent from KICad and lightweight to integrate.